Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror (4 page)

'Come with me, ladies,.' she said, handing them a glass each. As she walked away Maud stared at Harriet with a questioning look, but Harriet merely frowned and followed Mrs Barnard back down the hall.

'Do you see how these two doors are evenly spaced?' she said. They nodded. 'Well, it seems that at some point many years ago they decided to take down a wall and open the two next-door rooms into one large room, as we have it now. I am told that they did not want to spoil the symmetry of the hall and so left this door here.' She indicated the left-hand one, then turned the handle of the door to its right. They followed her through.

'As you can see,.' she said. 'The door - the Un-Door - does not appear on this side of the wall.'

Maud gave Harriet a slight nod of her head towards the cabinet nearby full of nicely concealable silver trinkets. Harriet nodded back.

'Come, I have something else I would like to show you,.' said Mrs Barnard. 'That is if you are quite recovered, Mrs Lyons.'

'Me?' said Maud. 'Oh, I'm quite all right, my dear. You are so kind to be concerned. But we ought to be going really, shouldn't we, Harriet?'

'Oh, but you have time to see the doll's house?' she said.

'The doll's house?' said Harriet.

'I am really not sure we have . . .' began Maud, but Mrs Barnard was already leading them out of the room and towards the stairs. After a moment's pause they followed on behind.

Mrs Barnard led them up the stairs and opened the door Harriet had opened earlier.

'I'm sure Olivia will not mind,.' she said.

'Oh, look, Harriet,.' said Maud, feigning interest. 'Look at the doll's house there. I can't think I've ever seen one finer.'

'Yes,.' said Mrs Barnard. 'It is a copy of the house we are in. The doll's house was here when our father bought the house in fact. We inherited it from the previous occupants.'

'It's beautiful,.' said Harriet in genuine admiration. 'I would have loved a house like that as a child.'

Mrs Barnard sighed. 'I never liked the house to be honest,.' she said sadly. 'I used to share this room with my sister - the house was really hers. She would play with it for hours. But there was something about it that rather gave me a chill. Still does actually.'

'A chill, madam?' said Harriet. 'Why?'

'Well,.' said Mrs Barnard with a sigh. 'My sister became rather obsessed with the doll's house, I am afraid to say. She would sit in front of it like someone at prayer, muttering and mumbling. She would fly into a rage if I so much as touched any of the dolls. It was as if they were real to her.'

'But is that not true of all children, Mrs Barnard?' said Harriet.

'Yes,.' said Mrs Barnard with a sad smile. 'But my sister was different from other children. She lost . . . all sense of reality. I suppose she lost her mind. I found her one day, laughing like a wild thing, huddled in the corner, wide-eyed, pointing at the doll's house. She never really recovered her wits. She became frantic and feverish, and no amount of laudanum seemed to calm her.' Mrs Barnard's eyes sparkled with tears as she turned to Harriet. 'In the end her heart simply gave out. She was only twelve.'

Harriet was surprised to feel a small pang of sympathy for Mrs Barnard. 'It must have been very hard for you,.' she said.

'It was,.' said Mrs Barnard. 'It was. But it was a long time ago. Life moves on.'

Mrs Barnard turned back to the doll's house.

'As you can see,.' she said, pointing to it, 'the doll's house shows the room downstairs as it was before the wall was taken down. In the doll's house, the Un-Door actually opens into a tiny room. Do you see?'

Harriet and Maud peered forward. The doll's house was indeed a rather good copy of the house in which they stood, the front wall and roof removed. There was the room in which they had held the seance, there was the hall, there was the bedroom they were in, complete, incredibly enough, with a tiny copy of the doll's house. And there was the room that no longer existed: the room the Un-Door had once led to. Harriet noticed that it had several tiny figures sitting in the chairs.

'This may help,.' said Mrs Barnard, handing Harriet a magnifying glass. 'The detail is extraordinary.'

Harriet peered at the figures. There was something disturbing about them. Not only did the detail seem impossibly fine, but some of the figures had carefully painted features on their china heads and some had been left strangely blank.

'Well,.' said Maud, growing a little concerned at the amount of time they were spending at the house. 'I think we should thank Mrs Barnard for showing us around . . . But we really must be on our way.'

'Of course,.' said Mrs Barnard. 'I did not mean to keep you.'

'Is it still played with?' said Harriet as they were heading downstairs. 'The doll's house?'

'Oh, Olivia used to play with it all the time,.' she replied. She stopped and turned to Harriet. 'Between you and me, I think she still does.' She reached out and touched Harriet gently on the arm.

Mrs Barnard followed them to the front door and out into the front garden. Just before they reached the gate, Mrs Barnard asked them to wait while she returned to the house for a moment.

'When she comes back out,.' whispered Harriet. 'You keep her busy and I'll nip inside. I fancy a piece of silver from that cabinet we saw downstairs.'

'Right you are,.' said Maud, tappng the side of her nose and winking.

Harriet shook her head.

'Are you tipsy, you old fool?' she hissed. 'You got to keep your wits about you in this game. A couple of sips of sherry and look at you.'

'I could drink you under the table any day of the week,.' Maud hissed back. 'Show a bit of respect.'

Mrs Barnard reappeared and they immediately pulled apart and stood smiling sweetly as she approached. She stood with them at the gate in the shadow of an enormous clipped holly tree and took a bank note from a pocket in her dress.

'Really, there is no need,.' said Maud, taking it from her.

'For your expenses, Mrs Lyons,.' said Mrs Barnard.

'Thank you,.' said Harriet. 'You are very kind.

Oh!' Harriet clutched her stomach and groaned.

'Miss Lyons?' said Mrs Barnard.

'I fear the sherry may have upset my stomach,. ' she said. 'I am not used to drinking. May I use your water closet?'

'Of course,.' said Mrs Barnard. 'Let me show you . . .'

'No!' said Harriet firmly. 'Thank you. I will be quite well. I know where it is.'

Harriet hurried away, holding her stomach.

Maud smiled in admiration.

'Poor girl,.' said Mrs Barnard.

'Yes,.' replied Maud. 'She is a delicate thing really.'

'I expect the excitement of meeting Olivia has something to do with it. I had not realised your daughter shared your gift, Mrs Lyons,.' said Mrs Barnard.

'Harriet?' said Maud suspiciously. 'Gift? I am not sure I follow you, Mrs Barnard,.' said Maud, growing concerned that, for all her apparent naivety, this woman was beginning to suspect something.

'But Harriet saw Olivia in the hall.'

'Your daughter?' said Maud puzzled. 'I fail to see how . . .'

'I do not have any children, sadly,.' said Mrs Barnard. 'Olivia was my sister.'

Maud frowned.

'I don't follow you, Mrs Barnard.'

'Olivia died when we were children,.' said Mrs Barnard. 'As I told you upstairs. Harriet was blessed enough to meet and talk with her spirit.'

Maud looked from Mrs Barnard to the house and back again in utter amazement.

Harriet was surprised to see that the so-called Un-Door was slightly ajar. The whole story had been nonsense! But why - why would they lie about something like that? Perhaps she should have a quick look around.

As soon as Harriet opened the door and stepped in, she was blinded by dazzling light, bursting in from one side of the room as if it were a conservatory. She turned back to the door to leave. But when she grabbed the door handle it would not move. The door was locked.

Harriet turned back to the room to see if there was a connecting door to the other room or some other way out. When she did so, she saw a figure looming towards her out of the blazing light. Beyond her she could just make out other girls sitting in chairs about the room, staring horribly as if in a trance, their faces gaudily painted with rosy cheeks and arched eyebrows, slumped in stiff and awkward poses.

At first she had thought that she could not make out the features of the approaching girl because of the light behind her head, but now, with a terrible, falling feeling, as if she had stepped from a high cliff, she realised that the girl had no features to see. Harriet pounded on the door for help.

'Please!' she shouted. 'Maud! For God's sake! Help me! Help me!'

But that infinitesimal beat on the doll's house door was lost to everyone. Everyone but Olivia.

I was so gripped by my uncle's story that it was some time before I thought to look down at the doll he had placed in my hand before he began.

I brought the tiny figure up to my face and studied it afresh. The rosy firelight glow warmed up the features of the face and made the detailed painting even more startling. The features of the girl's face seemed impossibly, unfeasibly real.

'So, Edgar,.' said Uncle Montague. 'Does that tale in any way alter your views on contact between the living and the dead?'

'Well,.' I said. 'I would have to say that, respectfully, it does not. It is, after all, merely a story.'

'Merely a story?' said my uncle with a sudden violence that made me drop the doll into my lap. 'Merely a story? Is that what you think? That these tales are my inventions?'

'Well . . . yes . . . I rather thought they were. I am sorry if I have offended you, sir.'

'No, Edgar,.' said Uncle Montague with a sigh. 'I am sorry to have snapped at you. What else would you think? I shall take that from you now.' He held out his long hand towards the doll. 'A lady does not like to be stared at.'

I gave him the doll and he walked over to the cabinet, putting it back where it had been. Again, he turned his back to me and looked out of the window. I could see that I had wounded his feelings in some way, but I was not sure how. Surely he did not expect me to accept these stories as true. How could they be?

'Come and look at this, Edgar,.' said Uncle Montague.

He had moved over to examine a group of framed prints near the window. I got up to join him and as I walked towards him I had the strangest feeling that there was someone outside by the window, someone who ducked out of sight as I approached. I peered out but there was nothing to be seen.

My uncle was looking at a framed engraving of some sort of sculpture. It had the rather stilted quality of ancient engravings, but nevertheless it rendered its subject with enough skill to make it quite a startling image.

The sculpture itself took the form of a horned devil and even to my untrained eyes it had a medieval look about it. So it proved to be.

Initially I thought it was a gargoyle, as it was the kind of grotesque one frequently sees jutting out of a church tower, but on closer inspection I could see that the thing was carved in wood. I could also now see that it was part of the fabric of a church pew.

Quite why anyone - the original woodcarver or the engraver - would want to take the trouble to portray anything quite so odious was beyond me, but my uncle stared at it as if it were a portrait of a favourite granddaughter.

'Is the engraving valuable, sir?' I asked.

'The engraving?' said Uncle Montague. 'No, Edgar. It is not particularly valuable. It is the subject matter that is significant.'

'But what is it, Uncle?'

'Why, Edgar, it is a demon, of course.'

'Yes, Uncle,.' I said. 'I meant to ask why it was so significant.'

'That is its significance,.' he answered more solemnly. 'It is a demon.'

I waited in vain for my uncle to elaborate upon this opaque statement.

'Is there some story connected with this engraving, Uncle?' I asked, after the pause had become uncomfortably long.

'How perceptive of you, Edgar,.' he said. 'But would you really want to hear another of my foolish inventions?'

'I have not called them foolish, sir,.' I said. 'And I would very much like to hear another of your stories.'

Uncle Montague chuckled softly and laid his hand upon my shoulder.

'Then let us sit down once more and I shall tell you a tale concerning our curious friend here.'

We returned to our chairs. Again, I could have sworn that I heard footsteps outside the window and the sound of whispering - of children whispering. My uncle seemed oblivious to it and so I took it to be my imagination, excited by my uncle's stories, playing tricks on me.

'But I wonder if this tale may be too disturbing for you,.' said Uncle Montague, seeing me peering towards the window, turning to the fire and prodding at a log with the poker.

'Really, Uncle,.' I said, pushing out my jaw. 'I am not as timid as you seem to think.'

Uncle Montague lay down the poker and turned to me with a warm smile - a smile that quickly faded from his face as he linked his long fingers together and began this new story.