The Grey Girl (12 page)

Our tea turned cold as I told my best friend everything that had happened to me since I first set foot in Dudley Hall. ‘I knew early on that something wasn't right.' My voice trembled as I told her about my curtains pulling themselves open each night. I told her about the strange scene I'd seen from my bedroom window. She listened, as still as stone, as I told her about the wet footprints on the stairs and the poetry book I'd found on my bed. ‘The book had the poem
The Lady of Shalott
in it, you know the one –'

‘Where the girl is locked up and cursed and then escapes on a boat and dies floating down the river,' Frankie finished off my sentence. ‘There's a portrait of The Lady of Shalott in the Tate gallery in London. I've seen it.'

‘Well, a line from the poem was scratched into the mirror in the attic room,' I said.

‘What attic room?'

I told her about first hearing crying coming from the room, and about how I climbed up the side of the house to get into the room. Frankie shuddered as I told her about what had happened to me once I'd managed to get inside, how I'd seen the grey girl with my own eyes.

‘You should have called me, Suzy,' she whispered. ‘You could have had someone to talk to.'

I told her about Nell, Nate and his mother Fiona. ‘I'm positive Nate doesn't know anything, I think he's convinced his mum's ill – he's so protective of her. But Nell and Fiona know way more than they're letting on. The last time I saw Fiona she took one look at me and knew I'd seen her. She was the one who called her the grey girl. And Nell knows something too, but she's not telling me. There's a reason she won't go upstairs in the house. Nell says I should let the dead lay sleeping.'

‘But the dead don't sleep, Suzy,' Frankie warned me. ‘Not if they still dream about their life. They have something unsettling them. You need to find out what happened to that girl, try to right some terrible wrong. Only then will she move on.' She sat back in her seat and her eyes softened slightly as she regarded me. ‘I've missed you so much. And being here, talking about this kind of stuff in broad daylight makes it all seem manageable. It doesn't seem so terrifying if you have someone to face it with.' I smiled at her, she was right.

‘Maybe when we get back to the house we can go up to the attic room?' I said. ‘I haven't been able to go back up there since … but maybe together?'

Frankie nodded and smiled. ‘I'll do anything I can to help you. And to prove to the rest of the world that we're not crazy. Just because other people don't see things, don't believe, doesn't mean that we don't. Someone has to lay this spirit to rest, Suzy. It needs to be us … you … you're the one she's trying to reach. Everything you've seen and heard at the house, it all means something. We just need to work out what.'

‘Wow, you've changed.' I raised my eyebrows. ‘I remember when I met you and practically had to force you into doing a Ouija board with me. Now look at you, trying to convince me that ghosts are real.'

‘I don't think you need convincing, Suzy. Look, what do you know so far?'

‘Well, I know the house once belonged to the Dudley family. Rich aristocrats who lost their money and had to sell off the house. After that the house was a school, a girls' school.' Frankie gave me a shudder and a knowing nod. ‘The school closed down years ago because it ran out of funding. After that the house fell into disrepair.'

‘So the girl was either a member of the Dudley family or one of their servants, or a girl at the school,' Frankie said quickly.

‘I'd guess she was a schoolgirl. The clothes I saw her wearing looked old-fashioned but not ancient – my guess is she died in the last century.'

‘Okay, so we should find someone who went to the school and ask them if they know anything that might help. And ghost stories, legends, rumours …'

I nodded. ‘Nate's grandmother, Nell and Fiona's mum, was at the school.'

‘So let's go talk to her.'

‘Can't.' I shook my head. ‘She's dead.'

‘So we ask her daughters.' Frankie shrugged. ‘Which leads us back to Nell and Fiona. Or we could ask Nate – he must have heard the story, even if he doesn't believe it.'

‘Actually, Nate is really cute,' I admitted, feeling the need to lighten the tone of conversation now we had a plan in place.

Frankie raised her eyebrows playfully. ‘Even more reason to talk to him then.'

I shook my head firmly. ‘The last thing I need at the moment is the distraction of a hot boy.' I rolled my eyes dramatically and Frankie smiled.

‘Hmm,' she teased, raising a teaspoon full of cream to her mouth and licking it off. ‘
Love is a smoke and is made with the fume of sighs
.'

‘
Romeo and Juliet
,' I smiled. ‘God, it's good to see you again, Frankie. You see what I mean … love … smoke … choking … distraction! I can't have it. Nate might be cute but … oh my God, Frankie! Look over there!' I pointed to the boy in jeans and a white T-shirt walking over the village green. ‘That's him.'

‘He
is
cute.' She winked at me. ‘And you have the perfect excuse to go over and talk to him.'

‘I really don't think I'm ready, Frankie.' I watched Nate disappear down the road and out of sight. ‘I'm not sure I want him to see the real me, scars and all. I'll wait and ask his mother or Nell instead – much better idea.'

Frankie got to her feet, pushing the chair away as she rose. ‘So let's go and ask them.'

‘Now?'

She nodded. ‘Now.'

‘Nell will be at Dudley Hall getting things ready for the murder mystery guests arriving tomorrow,' I said, staying sat down in the hope that Frankie would sit back down too. ‘And I really don't want to ask Nell anyway – she's already warned me not to mess with this kind of stuff.'

‘So we ask her sister, Fiona,' Frankie said impatiently, still waiting for me to stand up.

‘Okay,' I said reluctantly, getting to my feet.

I paid for the food we hadn't touched and we left the tea shop. I filled Frankie in on what little I knew about Fiona as we walked over to their cottage. ‘Fiona and Nate have been living with Nell since Fiona split from Nate's dad. Nell has a cottage by the church. The Old Rectory.'

We walked through the village towards the church. I felt brave with Frankie by my side. For a moment I let myself get lost in a daydream that we were paranormal investigators. Kick-ass girls who fought demons and ghosts and nothing ever scared us or got in our way. I saw the Old Rectory as soon as we turned the corner by the church, with its thatched roof and crooked Tudor beams appearing to hold it up. Smoke was billowing from the chimney.

‘Who lights a fire this time of year? It's nearly summer,' Frankie commented. ‘Shall we knock on the door?'

‘Not yet,' I said. ‘Let's see who's at home first.'

Staying out of sight from the windows, we snuck up to the house. We moved off the gravel garden path and onto the soft green grass that surrounded the house so our footsteps wouldn't be heard as we approached. Practically crawling on the ground, I moved towards the house and peeked into the front window. The window looked into the kitchen. No one was in there. It looked immaculate – everything neatly stacked and the surfaces sparkling clean.

Frankie made a silent gesture with her hand and I followed her around the side of the house. Rose plants crept up the trellis on the cottage walls. The garden was well kept – a large, healthy green lawn and beautiful flower beds. We approached another window, almost slithering along the ground so we could stay hidden. Once we were underneath the windowsill we slowly raised our heads so we could look into the room. It was the sitting room I'd sat in with Nell and Nate the night I'd visited for dinner. There was a woman hunched over on the floor and crying. I recognised her straight away. It was Fiona. She was crouched on the floor, her shoulders shaking from sobbing as she looked ahead into the fire blazing in the grate.

Frankie and I turned to one another and exchanged a worried look.

‘What the hell do you think you're doing?' came Nate's voice from behind me.

Frankie and I both jumped and turned around to find Nate standing right behind us.

I grabbed Frankie's hand and without a word to one another we both leapt to our feet and began to bolt away from the house.

We ran and ran without once looking behind us, all the way back to Dudley Hall.

Frankie and I spent the afternoon hidden away in my bedroom, the whole time paranoid that Nate would burst into the house at any moment and accuse us of being spies, or burglars or just downright nosy. But Nate hadn't made an appearance at Dudley Hall; in fact, Frankie and I had barely spoken to anyone else all day. We'd sat up in my room, listening to music and reading through
The Complete Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson
.

‘We should speak to Nell tonight,' Frankie said, her eyes on the poetry book.

‘Nell will be busy getting everything ready for the guests arriving tomorrow,' I explained weakly to Frankie. If there was any way I could avoid talking to Nell about the grey girl then I would. Nell may have told me I could trust her, that she wanted to be my friend and that I should come to her with questions, but if there was a way to keep her out of this, to deal with everything alone, then that's what I wanted. I couldn't help but think Nell would be disappointed if she knew I was digging about in the grey girl's grave –
the ghosts you chase you never catch
. ‘Besides,' I added. ‘Who knows what Nate's had the chance to tell Nell by now. I'm surprised she's not called the police on us for trespassing on private property.'

Frankie rolled her eyes. ‘Suzy, don't be dramatic.'

There was a knock on my bedroom door. We both stiffened and looked at one another. The knocking came again. ‘Who is it?' I called out.

‘Toby,' came a small voice from the other side of the door.

I walked over and opened the door. My young cousin stood there on the landing, wearing his Sherlock costume and holding on to his plastic pipe. ‘Can I come in?'

I looked up and down the landing for any signs of life, and once I knew no one was watching I stood back so Toby could come into my room. He gave Frankie a small smile and she looked at him blankly. Frankie doesn't have any kid siblings or cousins so she's even more clueless about children than I am.

‘Aren't you helping your mum and Nell get everything ready for the murder mystery this weekend?' I asked Toby.

He shook his head. ‘He said I needed to get out of the way this evening.' I didn't need to ask who ‘he' was. ‘He said that everyone had too much to do and I was getting in the way. He told me to go to my room. But I don't want to go to my room yet, I'm not tired.' It was obvious that Toby hated Richard just as much as I did. Only Toby wasn't nearly as brave or stupid as I was – there was no way he'd tell Richard what he thought of him. He just suffered in silence. Poor kid. ‘How long is he staying for?' Toby asked quietly. I looked down at the pained expression on my young cousin's face with pity. At least I got to walk away from Richard and slam my bedroom door – Toby was stuck playing happy families with the man.

I shrugged at Toby and smiled sympathetically. ‘Not long, I hope.'

‘Can I play with you this evening?' he asked timidly. ‘We could play detectives again.'

‘We have something important to do, Toby,' I apologised.

‘What?' he asked.

I hesitated. ‘We need to go back up into the attic,' I explained.

‘Can't I come with you? I could help you, like I did before.'

Frankie cast me an annoyed look. ‘It's not safe up there,' she said to Toby.

He furrowed his brow and looked cross. ‘I won't get in your way, I promise. I want to go up there again, but I don't like it on my own.' I knew exactly how he felt.

‘Sorry, Toby.' I shook my head. ‘This is grown up stuff, and it's dangerous. I don't want to drag you into it. We can play detectives again tomorrow, I promise.'

Toby's eyes began to water and he blinked back his tears stoically. ‘Okay, Suzy,' he whispered. I watched as he turned around, his little Sherlock Holmes cloak trailing behind him as he sulked down the corridor away from me.

‘God, I'm a horrible, horrible person,' I said as I closed my bedroom door behind me.

‘And you think
I've
changed,' Frankie muttered. ‘Since when do you hang out with children?'

‘He's not so bad,' I said. ‘And I feel sorry for him. He's got no one here. He's bored out of his mind.'

‘We can't have a kid get mixed up in all of this. You know that,' Frankie replied. ‘You've got to be cruel to be kind, Suzy. It's best he keeps well away.'

I nodded and sighed. I knew she was right but I still felt terrible for turning Toby away. ‘Ready to do this?'

‘If you won't let us speak to Nell then I don't see what choice we have.' Frankie shrugged.

‘I don't want to get Nell involved,' I said firmly.

‘Then let's go.'

I led Frankie out of my bedroom, along the corridor and up the final flight of stairs in silence. It was beginning to get dark outside and twilight was starting to spill into the house through the large domed skylight, casting an eerie glow as we ascended the stairs.

Frankie's eyes widened as we reached the attic landing. She looked left and right, along the empty, dilapidated corridors. ‘Okay, which one is the room she's in?'

I took a deep breath and walked down the corridor towards the last room on the right. The door to the haunted room hung limply on one of its hinges. It was broken and splintered from where Richard had kicked it down to rescue me when I was locked inside. I pushed the door timidly and it creaked open. My heart began to pound in my chest as I came face to face with the room once again.

I took a step further into the room, confused by what I was seeing. The room had changed – it wasn't at all as I had seen it the day I'd climbed up the side of the house. It was completely empty. There were a few twigs and bits of moss in the corner where the raven's nest must have been, but that was all there was to be seen. No wardrobe, no dressing table, no books or toys of any kind. ‘It wasn't like this when I was in here before,' I said, my voice trembling. Frankie gave me an encouraging nod. ‘There was an old wardrobe here where the birds were nesting. And here –' I pointed to the other corner – ‘was the dressing table and shattered mirror. It had a line from
The Lady of Shalott
carved into it:
I am half sick of shadows
…'

‘I love that poem,' said Frankie. ‘It's so sad.
She has heard a whisper say, A curse is on her if she stay, To look down to Camelot.
I wonder if the mirror you saw is some kind of clue. I mean, it's important in the poem, isn't it? The girl was cursed to always look in a mirror. The moment she turned away from the mirror and looked out of the window she knew she had to die.'

I walked over to the window and looked down onto the grounds below. I watched the fading sunlight bounce off the river as it flowed away from the house, towards the boathouse and the world beyond. ‘I swear this room was full of …' I whispered, my breath clouding up the glass on the attic window.

‘There will be an explanation,' Frankie said quickly. ‘Maybe Richard has already had the room cleared out.'

I nodded my head, wanting to believe her. ‘There's an old boat down there, in the boathouse.' I pointed in the direction of the boathouse, beyond the weeping willow. ‘It's called
The Lady of Shalott
. It hasn't been used for years, but I'm sure it's the same boat I've seen the girl climb into.'

Frankie came and stood next to me and peered out into the world. ‘Probably not a coincidence that the boat is named after the poem that you saw scratched into the mirror here. The poem that's in the book you found on your bed.'

I shook my head, suddenly feeling lost. ‘Unless I'm imagining the whole thing.'

Frankie grabbed my arm and pulled me around so I faced her. ‘No,' she said sternly. ‘You're not imagining it. We've been through this before. We need to figure out what's happening so we can make it stop.' I nodded and drew in a deep breath as Frankie continued. ‘Here, you get the Ouija board ready and I'll take pictures of the room, that way you won't have to come up here again, you can just look at the pictures if you need to.'

Frankie took out her phone and began to snap away, capturing the room from every angle. I pulled out a folded piece of paper from my pocket. We'd made the makeshift Ouija board earlier, tearing a leaf of paper from my notepad and writing the letters of the alphabet and the words ‘Yes' and ‘No' on it. As I spread the board flat on the ground and placed a coin in the middle of the board my hands began to shake. I hadn't done a Ouija board since the time Frankie and I unleashed the angry spirit of a dead girl at school. I'd sworn I'd never do anything so reckless ever again, and yet here I was, ready to unleash the unknown once more.

Frankie put her phone in her pocket and sat down opposite me. ‘This isn't a mistake,' she said gently, as if reading my mind. ‘We need to do this.'

I nodded silently and reached my hands out over the board. Frankie put her clammy hands in mine and closed her eyes. I closed my eyes too, and at the same moment we both chanted in unison, ‘Spirits, come to us, Spirits, come to us, Spirits, come to us.'

I prised my eyes open and we let go of each other's hands. We each placed the tip of an index finger on the coin in the centre of the paper. ‘Is there anyone there?' Frankie asked. Without so much as a beat the coin began to move towards the box that said ‘Yes'. My heart fluttered in my chest like a trapped bird. ‘We knew this would happen,' Frankie reassured me. ‘This is a good sign. It means she's ready to speak to us.'

‘Are you the spirit of the girl I saw here?' I asked, my voice rattling in my throat.

The coin remained on the box that said ‘Yes'.

‘Why are you still here?' Frankie asked.

The coin shuffled under the weight of our fingers. I relaxed the pressure I had on the coin's surface so my finger was barely touching it. I felt Frankie's finger next to mine twitch as she did the same. The coin began to glide effortlessly over the board, towards the letters written on the edges of the paper. It paused for a moment on the letter C. Then it began to move again, this time coming to a stop at the letter U. It moved again and again until it had spelt out a word.

CURSED

I felt my blood rush to my head and my vision begin to shake as my breathing became erratic. I looked up at Frankie and her eyes were swollen with horror. She swallowed hard, staring at me as though I was about to burst into flames. ‘What curse?' she asked the spirit, not losing eye contact with me.

The coin moved again. It moved so fast my eyes struggled to keep up with it. Together, Frankie and I sounded out the letters it moved to, slowly speaking the words it wanted us to hear.

THE CURSE IS COME

‘What are you doing?' came a small voice in the doorway.

My heart nearly leapt out of my mouth at the sight of my small cousin standing in the doorway. Still wearing his Sherlock Holmes costume, Toby was watching us, his face a mix of confusion and fear.

I leapt to my feet, my fingers leaving the coin and the Ouija board. ‘Toby, you shouldn't be here.' My voice shook as I spoke.

‘I heard crying,' Toby said, sounding worried. ‘It sounded like a girl crying. I came up the stairs to spy on you, to see if you were okay. Then I heard the crying coming from this room and when I looked in here you were sitting on the floor and she was standing next to you. But now she's gone. Where did she go?'

My heart raced in my chest. This couldn't be happening. My gorgeous, sweet little cousin had seen far more than he should have done.

‘We were playing a game, Toby, and whatever you saw you imagined. There's no girl.'

Frankie picked the Ouija board up off the floor and began to tear it to shreds. ‘We need to get out of here,' she said, her voice shaking as much as mine.

I took Toby's shoulders and steered him out of the room. We began to run down the corridor. The three of us bolted down the stairs, all the way down to my bedroom. Toby looked like someone had just told him up was down. ‘You were playing a game,' he said like a dumb parrot.

I crouched down so my eyes were level with his. ‘Yes, and you can't tell anyone about it. And you can't tell anyone what you saw. Not your mum, or Richard, or anyone. Promise?'

He nodded weakly.

‘I'm scared,' he whispered.

I tried to smile. ‘Don't be silly. There's nothing to be scared about. Look, it's nearly bedtime. Why don't you go and find your mum and ask her to read you a detective story?'

Toby nodded and ran off down the hall, calling for his mother. I felt a horrible pang of guilt that whatever was lurking in the shadows of this house had now appeared to Toby. But he was young, he wouldn't understand, and with any luck he would have forgotten every last detail of it by the morning.

‘Give those to me.' I pulled the shreds of paper from Frankie's hands and took them over to the empty fireplace. I had a box of matches in my desk drawer. I rummaged around until I found them and then set the remains of the Ouija board alight.

‘He saw her too, Suzy,' Frankie said, sitting down on the bed. ‘Whoever she is we need to help her move on.'

‘I don't want Toby involved with any of this.'

‘It's too late for that. You know how this stuff works, Suzy. Once the spirit is out there we can't stop it. The more we can do to protect him and everyone else, the better. We need to find out who she is and what she wants. We need to find a way to make her disappear.'

I knew Frankie was right.

‘What should I do now?' I asked, suddenly feeling exhausted.

Frankie took the phone from her pocket. ‘I don't think we should go up there again. Not until we have some way of dealing with whatever's there. We don't have a choice but to ask Nell and Fiona what they know.'

I loved the way she said ‘We', even though I knew that by tomorrow Frankie would be gone and I'd be facing this alone. Frankie's face paled as she began to scroll through the pictures she'd just taken in the attic on her phone. ‘What's wrong?' I asked.