Property of a Lady (6 page)

Nell thought, oh God, if he came back I wouldn’t care what he was – just half an hour with him would be enough . . .

She said, ‘Beth, darling, dead people never come back.
Never
. And if Dad ever did, he wouldn’t come in a scary way. I promise you he wouldn’t. What he might do is be in a really nice dream, where he’d tell you he loved you and missed you.’

‘I’d like that,’ said Beth, having considered it. ‘I think I’ll go to sleep, in case he does that tonight, shall I?’

‘That’s a really good idea. Don’t forget to say goodnight to the moon.’

‘I’ll wait until he’s over that tree,’ said Beth. ‘G’night, Mum.’

Nell left the low landing light on for Beth and went down to the sitting room. The house was a shop in the main street, with a large flat on the first and second floors. She liked it very much; she had looked at a number of different areas to find the exact right property. She needed to go on working – partly for the money, but also for her own sanity – but she also wanted to be at home when Beth finished school each day. Living over the shop solved that.

The ground floor had two deep bow windows for displays, with the shop behind it and a tiny office. Upstairs was a long L-shaped living room, part of which overlooked the main street, with a kitchen behind. The second floor had three bedrooms and a bathroom.

Nell washed up the supper things, thinking about what Beth had said. The dead man knocking on the door. That was an eerie concept, however you looked at it, and whatever your beliefs. She might have a word with Beth’s teacher tomorrow, to make sure there was no macabre local rhyme doing the rounds in the playground. Older children sometimes deliberately scared younger ones.

For now, though, she would light a fire and curl up with Alice Wilson’s diaries. It was still a delight to have an old-fashioned fire, although it was a bit of a nuisance to have to sweep out the ashes next morning. But tonight she would enjoy the crackling flames. She poured a glass of wine, curled up in the deep sofa, and reached for the yellowing pages.

Alice Wilson’s diary: Charect House, 10.30 p.m.

The old clock’s ticking quietly away to itself in the corner, and I’m not sure that it’s quite as companionable as I thought. In fact, a couple of times I’ve felt like hurling something at its smug, swollen face to shut it up. But here’s a curious thing – twenty minutes ago I approached it with the intention of stuffing my scarf into the works to stop the mechanism, but when it came to it I couldn’t. I can’t explain it – but when I bent down and unlatched the door and saw the pendulum swinging to and fro, I was seized by such a violent aversion that I couldn’t even touch it.

Now that it’s night the house feels colder than it did this afternoon, but before leaving the Black Boar I put on a couple of extra sweaters and a fleece-lined jacket, together with thick flannel trousers and woollen socks. I’ve caught more colds than I can count over the years by spending the night in icily-cold houses, waiting for ghosts who never turn up, so now I swathe myself in layers of wool. I look like a roly-poly Mrs Noah, but there’s nobody to see me except the occasional spook.

11.55 p.m.

I have a feeling that something’s starting to happen. It’s not anything I can easily describe on paper, but it’s as if something’s disturbed the atmosphere. As if Charect House is enclosed in a glass bubble, and something outside is chiselling silently at the glass’s surface, to find a way in. Or even as if the tape recorders might be picking up sounds that humans aren’t supposed to hear. Like the singing of mermaids or the sonar shrieks of bats. Or the hopeless sobbing of tormented souls, unable to leave a beloved home . . .

(This last sentence was barely legible, having been impatiently scored through, as if the writer had been exasperated at her sudden display of nerves, or perhaps even embarrassed by it. The next section was written clearly and decisively, as if the pen had been firmly pressed down on the page with the aim of dispelling any weakness.)

12.15 a.m.

We’ve passed the witching hour – although it always amuses me that people set such store by midnight, as if ghosts have wristwatches and check them worriedly to make sure they aren’t missing an appointment to haunt somewhere. ‘Dear me, I see it’s five to twelve already, I’d better be off or I’ll be late for the moated grange . . .’

What I will admit is that there can sometimes be a vague eeriness about the crossing of one day to the next, or one year to the next, as if something invisible’s being handed from one pair of hands to another. And I have to say that when the old clock in here chimed twelve a short time ago, it startled me considerably. (It’s somehow not a very nice chime either, although that’s probably due to rust in the mechanism.)

It was shortly after the chiming of the clock that something happened.

I’d been reading (J.D. Salinger’s
Catcher in the Rye
, just for the record) with my notebook and pen on the chair arm. Actually, I was almost falling asleep: what with the sweaters and the two oil lamps, I was comfortably warm and feeling drowsy. Also, I’d had a slug of whisky to help keep out the cold.

I must have been on the edge of sleep when something jerked me back to consciousness, and I sat up sharply, trying to identify what it was. I waited, listening. Sounds outside? Yes. Someone was walking very quietly and very stealthily around the outside of the house.

The chances were that it was a curious local skulking around, or teenagers playing a trick: ‘There’s a ghost-hunter up at Charect – let’s give her a real scare.’ At any minute a garishly-painted mask might thrust itself against the French window, or a white-sheeted figure, wringing its hands and moaning, would prance across the gardens.

But for all that, I was slightly unnerved. I flatter myself that if ever I met a real spook I’d cope with it, but prowlers and housebreakers are a different pair of shoes entirely. And there was that business of the missing child to take into account.

After a moment I quenched the oil lamp. Its light died, but it hissed to itself in the shadows, like a coiled serpent. There was a pale blur from the French windows, where the faded curtains were partly open. The footsteps came again, and a flickering light showed in the monochrome tangle of the gardens. It was a smeary kind of light that didn’t look like an ordinary electric torch, and I reached cautiously for the Polaroid. If there were any spooks that would show up on film, J. Lloyd and his council might as well have their money’s worth. And if it did turn out to be some sick-minded child-stealer, then his features would be recorded and his capture made easier.

The light was coming closer, and the steps crunched on the gravel, but it was only when the footsteps stepped off the gravel on to grass that I heard the other sounds, and as God’s my judge, they’re going to give me nightmares for years.

A soft hoarse voice was weaving itself in and out of the greasy shadows. It was slightly blurred, but the words were dreadfully clear: I heard them as clearly as if they were being burned through my eyes straight into my brain.

‘Open lock to the dead man’s knock . . .

Fly bolt, and bar, and band . . .

Nor move, nor swerve, joint, muscle or nerve,

At the spell of the dead man’s hand.’

I have heard some macabre things in my years with the Psychic Research Society, but I have never heard anything so chillingly terrifying as that soft chanting that dribbled across the dark garden of Charect House.

The sullen light came closer, and the footsteps were louder. I fumbled for the Polaroid, although to be honest, I’m not sure if I could even have found the shutter, never mind pressed it. The dreadful voice began its chant again:

‘Open lock to the dead man’s knock,

Fly bolt, and bar, and band.

Sleep all who sleep – wake all who wake.

But be as the dead for the dead man’s sake.’

It was a minute or so before I recognized the words, but when I did, a chill traced its way down my spine. I knew what the rhyme was, and I knew what it meant. It sprang from a dark and very ancient belief embedded deep in the consciousness of Man – a belief and a desire stretching all the way back to Old Testament times. It’s the desire to be invisible, soundless, to possess the ability to render an enemy helpless. But underlying that – perhaps even underpinning it – is a deeper, more visceral need, and that’s the need for power over the dead.

You find the belief in the world’s most ancient legends – some of them so old that Time has frayed them to cobwebs. But the belief has its genesis (and that’s
not
meant as a pun!) in the biblical accounts of how Solomon caused temples to be raised in utter silence and without the use of any heavy tool – most of all without the use of iron, since iron, the substance used for weapons, shortens men’s lives. It’s a belief that’s in Icelandic myths as well: tales of magic-laden stones that will break bolts and bars and also raise the dead. The Persians and Arabians had it, too: they believed a single enchanted word had power to roll back stone doors and open mountains. The story of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, and the
Open Sesame
spell, isn’t just a Christmas pantomime.

And here in England is the belief in the Hand of Glory – the light fashioned from the fist of a hanged murderer and lit by graveyard fat and dead men’s hair. The burning hand whose light bursts locks and lulls a house’s occupants into sorcerous sleep.

I don’t believe a syllable of it, of course. But whoever was outside believed. And if this was a gang of Marston Lacy teenagers pretending to be ghosts, they were the most literate and deeply-read ghost-fakes I had ever encountered.

The chanting came again:

‘Open lock to the dead man’s knock . . .

Fly bolt, and bar, and band.

Sleep all who sleep – wake all who wake.

But be as the dead for the dead man’s sake . . .’

I can’t tell how long I sat there, listening to that dreadful voice, hearing the footsteps going round the outside of the house. I believe I managed to scribble a few words in this notebook, although I dare say they won’t make any sense later.

It was the sly chiming of the old clock that roused me to action. A single chime – one o’clock – and it was as if that wizened sound released something and the atmosphere of Charect House shifted again.

And as if the chime was a cue, on the outer door came three loud knocks.

My heart came up into my throat. Sensibly, it could have been an enterprising burglar making sure the house was empty, or the child-stealer looking for a hiding place. It might even have been a gypsy or a tramp looking for somewhere to spend the night.

But I knew it was neither of those things. I knew what it was. The dead man’s knock.

The knock came again, louder and more peremptory this time. I sat absolutely still, hardly even breathing. Because the last – the very last thing – I was going to do was go out into the dark house to investigate the caller’s identity. If he (it would be a “he” of course) was an ordinary living person, it would be the height of folly to open the door at one in the morning. If he wasn’t an ordinary living person, it would be folly of a different kind to open the door.

I stayed where I was, forcing myself to remember how I had gone round the house earlier, systematically locking and bolting every door, then putting the bunch of keys safely in my bag. The bag stood on the hearth in this room, within reach. The house was secure. I was safe. It was all right.

It was not all right, though, and I was not safe at all. Into the silence came a new sound – a slow, stealthy creaking. A door was being opened, and it was opening very slowly and almost unwillingly, as if something was leaning heavily against it.

For anyone reading this, I do
know
it sounds like classic ghost story stuff, but it was the most frightening thing I’ve ever heard. Then the door banged against a wall, and with a new lurch of fear, I thought – he’s got in. The owner of that dreadful hoarse voice, that figure who carried the bleared light, has got into the house. The lock has opened to the dead man’s knock.

1.15 a.m.

There’s been no further sound, but he’s out there – I can feel that he is. And I’m sitting here, summoning up my courage to go out of this room and search for him. I don’t believe what I saw was a manifestation, I
don’t
, but I can no longer ignore what’s happened. And the thought of J. Lloyd’s disgust if I have to tell him I ducked out of the investigation because I was frightened is spurring me on. J. Lloyd, if you ever read this, you’ll know if anything did happen to me tonight, it was your fault.

The Polaroid’s still round my neck on its strap, and I’ll take pictures of everything that moves. I’ll check the light-sensitive cameras in each room as well and the tape recorders. What if that grisly chanting has been recorded? But what if it hasn’t . . . ? Because there are sounds humans aren’t meant to hear, remember? The murmuring of demons, the secret whispering of wolves. And the chanting of a dark charm to open doors and cast slumber over human brains . . .