The Teacher's Tales of Terror (5 page)

BOOK: The Teacher's Tales of Terror
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And then, with a horrible suddenness, the cobbled street seemed to hurtle upwards to meet his startled face.

 

Mr Munro peered over the top of his book.

‘Please, sir,’ said a moon-faced boy near the back of the class, holding up his hand excitedly.

‘Yes?’ said Mr Munro.

‘I’m called Simon,’ he said.

‘How very interesting,’ said Mr Munro uninterestedly.

He noticed some activity outside and walked to the window. Children were gathered together with their teacher for a group photograph. They had their backs to him and the photographer took the photograph just as Mr Munro looked out. He smiled at the thought of his face showing up at the window at the back of the picture.

He turned back to the class to find another boy with his hand up.

‘Are you called Satan, perhaps?’ said Mr Munro.

‘No, sir,’ said the boy. ‘Richard, sir. My name’s Richard.’

‘And what can I do for you, Richard?’

‘Can we have another story, sir?’


May
we have another story,’ corrected Mr Munro. ‘But I really don’t think we will have the time.’

A wave of moans and sighs rolled towards the front of the class and Mr Munro pursed his lips, allowing himself a smile. He looked at his pocket watch and nodded.

‘Perhaps just one more,’ said Mr Munro.

The class cheered. Mr Munro raised his hands.

‘That is quite enough of that, thank you,’ he said.

The cheering promptly came to a halt. Mr Munro flicked back and forth through his book for a while until he finally placed his long finger on a page and nodded to himself.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘This one should do.’

‘What is this story about, sir?’ asked a girl at the front.

‘What long hair you have,’ said Mr Munro, ignoring her question.

The girl did indeed have a mane of long black hair that fell almost to her waist.

‘Does your mother brush it for you?’ he asked.

‘Yes, sir,’ she said. ‘Every night. Otherwise it gets all tangled.’

Mr Munro smiled and nodded.

‘I have a story about just such a mother and just such a lovely head of hair,’ said Mr Munro. ‘Would you like to hear it?’

The girl was very enthusiastic in her nodding. The boys nearby were less so.

‘Excellent,’ said Mr Munro.

4

Lydia

Lady Overton brushed her daughter’s long red hair. It was dark outside and the candlelight made the hair shimmer like fine strands of copper.

Tears began to well in Lady Overton’s eyes as she looked out of the tall bay window, beyond her own pale reflection, towards the family mausoleum and the mighty cypress trees that stood behind it, silhouetted like wrought-iron spikes against the indigo sky.

For it was three months since poor Lydia had been laid to rest in that very tomb; three months since Lady Overton had said farewell to a precious daughter, and poor Eleanor had lost her beloved twin.

A full moon glimmered blindly, cataract white, hidden now and then by ragged clouds, and the wind that moved those clouds also shook the cypresses and rattled the window frames. A draught fluttered the candle flames and made the shadows shake and jitter.

Eleanor seemed to guess her mother’s thoughts and smiled sweetly up at her in the reflection in the gilt-framed mirror that stood on the bedroom dressing table.

Lady Overton did her best to smile back. But her mind was aquiver with competing memories of her late daughter. Standing there, brush in hand, the pain seemed renewed and reinvigorated. The agony of loss is often waiting in the shadows of such mundane acts.

 

Every evening before bedtime, Lady Overton had come to her daughters’ room to brush their hair. One hundred strokes every night, with the lovely brush backed with mother-of-pearl that had belonged to Lady Overton’s grandmother.

Eleanor had endured this ritual because she knew her mother enjoyed it so, but she was without any great vanity about her appearance. Lydia on the other hand had been obsessive in this regard and in particular about her beautiful, long red hair.

Lady Overton had always told herself that she did not favour one girl above the other, but the truth was that she had always favoured Lydia. Eleanor knew it, and Lydia knew it.

To their mother, Lydia was like an angel come down to earth. This was, however, an act that Lydia had perfected for Lady Overton alone. To everyone else she was more devil than angel – and particularly to her poor sister.

It was Eleanor who was the real angel. She knew that her mother was not capable of thinking ill of Lydia and so saw no point in upsetting her mother with the truth about her wayward twin.

Despite the fact that Lydia showed her nothing but disdain and cruelty, Eleanor protected her sister and covered for her, even on occasion taking the blame for some of her more unsavoury activities.

This kindness did not endear Eleanor to her sister. Far from it. Lydia despised her for what she saw as weakness and was happy to see sweet Eleanor ignored or chastised by their foolish, deluded mother.

But all this passed Lady Overton by. Or at least it did for many years.

Then one day she caught Lydia stealing from her – only the day after a servant had been dismissed for a number of petty thefts about the house.

Lydia had been caught red-handed, taking money from the locked box in which Lady Overton kept cash for household expenses – something Lydia did on a regular basis, having long since acquired a copy of her mother’s key.

Suddenly a veil seemed to be pulled aside in Lady Overton’s mind and Lydia’s true character was now revealed in all its naked guile. Instead of begging her mother’s forgiveness, Lydia simply began to giggle.

Lady Overton’s world came tumbling down. She could say nothing. She turned from her daughter and walked briskly up the grand marble staircase heading for her room.

Lydia, seeing that the game was up, felt no further need to disguise her true nature. She followed her poor mother up the stairs, shouting one piece of foul abuse after another.

Lady Overton put her hands over her ears to try to block out the sound, but Lydia caught up with her mother and grabbed her arms to pull those hands away.

Lady Overton pushed her daughter aside. It was just one push. But it was a violent one, powered by a savage sense of disappointment and hurt.

There was a cry and a terrible succession of thuds, each more sickening than the last. Lady Overton turned to see her daughter at the foot of the marble stairs, a pool of blood spreading out from beneath her lovely hair.

‘Help!’ she cried. ‘Oh God. Help!’

Servants came rushing out. Daisy, the under-parlourmaid, dropped to the floor in a faint when she saw the blood, cracking her own head open in the process.

The scene was utter chaos until Higgins, the butler, arrived, and sent for the doctor. Lady Overton sat on the top step in a state of shock, hugged by Eleanor.

It occurred to no one that Lydia had suffered anything more than an accident. Everyone knew how much Lady Overton doted on Lydia and no one could have suspected her of any involvement in the girl’s fall. Lydia had not been popular among the servants and, though none would have wished her dead, none mourned her with any great conviction.

When Lady Overton finally came out of her daze, she had managed to suppress the unpleasantness leading up to her daughter’s death and her own part in it, at least to the watching world. At night, however, those moments revisited her, clawing at her sleeping mind.

Lady Overton devoted herself to the funeral arrangements and Lydia was laid to rest beside her ancestors with all the gravitas the surviving Overton family could muster.

A shrine to her memory was erected in the hall with an alabaster likeness on a small table and a vase which Lady Overton kept constantly stocked with freshly cut flowers.

Eleanor bore her mother’s devotion to her dead twin sister with all the good-humoured fortitude she had shown when Lydia was alive.

She would have happily foregone the nightly ritual of the hair brushing, but she knew that – though her mother could never have voiced it – the exercise gave her mother a brief moment to imagine that Lydia was still alive and looking back from the gilded mirror.

 

And so it was that Lady Overton stood, half entranced by the repetitious action, her heart aching with a boundless melancholy. The sadness she felt at Lydia’s death was tinged with a bitterness she could not acknowledge, a bitterness born of the revelation of Lydia’s true character and her own part in her daughter’s death.

The brush slid down the long red hair and it seemed to flow like liquid, like a long waterfall of red and gold.

Her daughter smiled at her from the mirror and Lady Overton smiled back, before looking out into the night once more, away to the resting place of her other daughter.

Lady Overton was startled to hear a piercing shriek. It was surely an owl, but it sounded so human. It was difficult to tell from which direction it came and there were owls all over the estate. But it did seem as though it came from the direction of the family mausoleum.

Lady Overton was sure she detected some movement in the blackness at the base of the trees, near to the wrought-iron entrance gate. She stopped brushing and peered into the darkness.

‘Mother?’ said her daughter. ‘Is something the matter?’

Lady Overton looked back at the mirror and at Eleanor’s concerned face.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Of course not.’

She resumed her brushing. But moments later there was another shriek. She looked out of the window and this time there could be no doubt.

‘Did you hear that?’ she asked.

‘What, Mother?’ asked Eleanor.

‘You heard nothing?’ Lady Overton said with a frown.

‘No, Mother,’ she replied. ‘What is it?’

‘An owl,’ said Lady Overton. ‘I think I heard the old barn owl. You know what an unearthly din they make. You didn’t hear it?’

‘No, Mother,’ said Eleanor.

‘Never mind,’ said Lady Overton. ‘It was an owl. Nothing more.’

Lady Overton looked out of the window again and was alarmed by what she saw. There was something moving. Something – somebody – dressed in white was moving down the path towards the house.

Though it was dark, Lady Overton could see that the figure stopped occasionally to look back towards the trees, towards the family tomb, and then carried on towards the house.

The clouds parted and the opal moon shone weakly across the grounds. Lady Overton could see the figure clearly now. It made no sense and yet she could not doubt the evidence of her own eyes.

The stranger (it was a woman, surely – no, no, a young girl) looked up at the window at which Lady Overton stood, stopped and stared. Then she turned to run with great determination to the door of the house.

‘Mother?’ said her daughter again. ‘What is the matter?’

‘I don’t know, my darling,’ she said breathlessly. ‘I thought I saw something outside . . .’

‘Saw something?’

But whoever had been outside was now inside. Lady Overton had heard the door slam, and feet were pattering up the very marble stairs poor Lydia had tumbled down just months before. She could hear those same feet coming towards her along the hall. She could see the door handle move and the door slowly open.

‘Oh my God,’ she said, dropping the brush to the floor as the door creaked open. Her daughter walked in, her white gown edged with dampness. Lady Overton grabbed the back of Eleanor’s chair for support.

‘Mother,’ said her daughter, standing in the doorway. ‘Do you not know me?’

Lady Overton’s grip on the chair tightened. She felt as though it was the only thing keeping her upright.

‘Lydia!’ said Lady Overton. ‘God forgive me. I am so sorry. I did not mean to do it. It was an accident. I –’

‘Please, Mother!’ said her daughter. ‘For pity’s sake: Lydia is dead. I am Eleanor – Eleanor, Mother.’

Lady Overton seemed to struggle to take in this information and she blinked as though dazed. Eleanor? Eleanor?

‘Something terrible has happened, Mother,’ said Eleanor. ‘I have sent Higgins to deal with it.’

Lady Overton turned and saw some figures running off towards the cypress trees, dissolving into the darkness as if consumed by it.

‘Someone has broken into the crypt. Oh, Mother. Grave robbers! They have taken Lydia’s body!’

‘Lydia’s body,’ repeated her mother mechanically. ‘Grave robbers.’

‘Mother!’ said Eleanor. ‘Please. You must lie down – you must . . .’

Eleanor did not finish the sentence. She could see something reflected in the mirror. What was that behind her mother? There was something sitting on the chair. She moved to get a better view and gasped in horror.

‘Mother!’ she cried, putting her hand to her mouth and recoiling in horror. ‘What have you done? What monstrous thing have you done?’

BOOK: The Teacher's Tales of Terror
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