The Mist in the Mirror (18 page)

The sun slipped behind a cloud and a slight breeze roughened the water and stirred the heads of the snowdrops.

‘Who are you?’ I called out then. ‘Who are you and what do you want of me? Why have you come to me again?’ He stood motionless and silent, staring, staring, and his look sent a chill of fear, and desperation through me. I began to move. ‘Wait,’ I shouted. ‘Wait there.’

But he did not. He turned away slowly, sadly, his head bent. He was further away than I had thought, and I had to get over the rough grass and then halfway round the lake. The path dipped down as it turned. I followed it, half-running, the dog at my heels.

When I came up the rise again, the path ahead, and the places between the trees, the whole of the park that stretched away ahead, were empty. The boy had gone.

The dog Fenny ran round in circles, sniffing first at the ground, then, nose up, into the air, before she came back to me, whimpering a little.

After a while, I turned back, picking up a couple of sticks to throw, encouraging her to follow me. But it was some time before she would give up, and leave the spot beside the lake, where the boy had been. I did not want to speak about what had happened and I did not have to. Apart from the servants, in their own part of the house, Pyre was empty. Lady Quincebridge had gone up to London to join her husband for a dinner and it would be the early hours of the next morning before the car brought them back.

When I got in, I went to the library and tried to concentrate on my work, but the boy remained in my mind; his pale face and ragged form, his air of desperate pleading came before my eyes, so that after only a short time I gave up and sat brooding about him, addressing him in my
thoughts. Who are you? Where do you come from? What are you asking of me?

But I knew who he was, I had known since I had been to Alton.

A fine rain was veiling the garden, the air was silver-grey, and I stood at the window for a while, looking mournfully out, half-expecting, even half-hoping, to see him again. He did not frighten me, whoever, whatever he was; I was puzzled by him, he challenged my sense of reality, made me question everything I saw around me. Above all, I did not understand how he could be apparently so solid, so
there
, if he was not. I knew that Viola Quincebridge, with her second sight, was aware of things unseen, of evil, danger and threats, and knew that she would at once pick up my disturbance of mood, and make me talk of the boy. I had felt immune from any strangeness here; until now, Pyre had been a wholly open and untroubled house. Now, it was not.

I went to sleep in my room for a couple of hours that afternoon, my head aching and my limbs heavy, as though some of the illness still hung about me and was dragging me down again. But I awoke somewhat refreshed and, after a quiet dinner, asked for the fire to be made up again in the library, and settled down at my desk.

At first, I worked well, and became deeply immersed in a particular account of a journey I had made with my Guardian into the tribal heartland of Kenya, when I was fourteen or so, a journey which had excited me and first awoken in me the desire to explore, to travel far into remote and primitive places. It had been an extraordinary time, the people friendly, welcoming and yet wholly alien, the country quite beautiful, most especially at dawn which, if I closed my eyes, I could see vividly before me, and hear the cries of the animals from the bush and the calls of the wild birds.

I wrote until my wrist ached and I was forced to set down my pen.

The fire, which never drew well in this chimney, was sluggish, black and smoking unpleasantly again, but the chill I felt around me had to do with more than that. The temperature was low and the air felt clammy, damp and stale. And, with the change of air, I felt something else, a presence in the room. I was being watched with hating, hostile eyes. I sat terrified, as I had been that night in the great library at Alton. Here, there was no gallery, and no possibility of anything being hidden behind the lines of bookcases, here I could look around the room and see everything, books on the walls, table, chairs, oak panelling, stone fireplace, the portrait of some jowly, beady-eyed ancestor with whip and stock that reared above it – the only unattractive picture in the house, and somehow, I had come to think, fittingly placed in this cold, hostile room.

I had not felt fear like this for weeks; indeed, I had never felt it at any time in this house, but now it came, and I was consumed by it, I wanted to cry out, my hands were wet, the hairs bristled upon my neck, my breathing was fast and shallow in my chest. Something was about to happen, something was here, evil and hatred, decay and cruelty were here and directed at me, and I could not escape.

I stood suddenly, knocking over my chair. I was seen. The eyes of the portrait bored into me, but it was not those eyes, hard and cold as they were, from whose stare I recoiled, it was from the gaze of someone I could not see.

‘Who are you?’ I whispered, my own voice choking in my throat. ‘What do you want of me?’

The smoke from the fire belched out softly, I smelled it, sulphurous on the dank air, which now seemed like air not inside any room of a house, but rather the air of some dungeon or vault below ground.

I wanted to stumble out of the door and call for Weston, ask for a fire in the bright cheerfulness of the morning
room, engage the man in a conversation just for the sake of his company, but I could neither move nor speak, it was as though I had been gripped by complete paralysis of the will and body, taken by an unseen, unknown presence and force. But it was not silent. I realised that now. For now, I heard the soft, regular sighing breathing; it seemed to be exuded by the walls at the fireplace end of the room. I stared and stared there, as if I could will whatever it was to materialise, but saw nothing, only heard, and was unable even to lift my hands to block out the sound, bound tight by invisible cords, and quite helpless.

I did not faint or cry out, I did nothing except close my eyes and wait, completely possessed by fear and by the presence in the room. In the end, it simply left. I was loosened from my bonds, I stumbled forwards to a chair, and sat, as the chill lifted, and a small spark of brightness flickered in the fire, and the only other sound was the gentle drumming of the rain on the roof and rolling down the gutters outside the window. The breathing simply stopped, the air lightened somehow. Even the old hunting squire was now merely solemn-faced and dull rather than malign of expression.

At last, I looked at my watch. I had set down my pen at a couple of minutes before ten. Hours had passed.

Then, the clock gathered itself, and struck, ten times.

I heard the opening of a door, footsteps, a knock, and Weston came in with the tray of whisky, and the usual plate of sandwiches. It was all I could do not to break down and weep with relief at the sight of him.

That night, I heard the sound of crying again, the same anguished sobbing I had first heard behind the locked door at Alton. It was in the room beyond my own, and it woke me. I lay listening to it without surprise, but rather, with a curious calm, for although it was as real to my ears as any
earthly sound could be, I knew that what I heard was unearthly, and that, if I rose and went out to try and trace it, I would fail. I do not think I felt any fear then, only bewilderment and a determination first to try and understand it – for my common sense told me that it was not possible to lie here and listen to a sobbing that was quite clear, quite definite, and yet which was unreal and came from no living human source. I was being assailed on all sides and in all my senses, seeing, hearing, feeling things around me that were not there – yet
there
, truly, vividly there to me when they presented themselves.

I could not remain here – or, indeed, anywhere now – or rest, until I had followed my instincts and attended to these things, whatever they were. I had tried to ignore them, going from one place to another, and been pursued, and I was certain now that wherever I fled they would follow me and find me out.

In the past, if I had ever been lost in some remote place, and without any normal means of discovering in which direction I should go, I had quickly learned that it was best to obey my instincts and inner promptings, and to go the way I sensed, though without any external evidence, was right.

Now I was sure that I must act in the same way. For some reason that was quite unclear, I knew I must go to Kittiscar, indeed was being urged to go. I did not know why I felt strongly that what was happening to me, these hauntings, if such they were, had ultimately to do with that place and my past in it, but as I lay in the darkness of my room at Pyre, listening to the sound of the boy’s desperate sobbing, I felt better, stronger and more confident, as well as calmer for having made that decision. And it was not a difficult one, I wanted to go, I had an inner conviction that I would find my own past at Kittiscar, that I had once belonged there, and perhaps did so still.

I fell into a doze, and gradually the sobbing faded and
the room was quiet again, save for the sound of rain on the windowpanes, a sound I had grown to love, partly because it was so different from the rain I had been used to abroad, rain that came in torrents, beating down madly upon frail buildings, gushing in fresh rivers outside, for days, weeks on end, and then, abruptly, ceased and came no more for months. But, as I drifted into sleep, I knew also that the soft rain here was a familiar, comforting sound from long ago, another echo of my childhood.

Two days later, I returned to Prickett’s Green. Lady Quincebridge had not tried to prevent it, knowing, though she had said little, that something had happened to disturb my quietude the day she had gone up to London. But I had welcomed her insistence that I return to Pyre whenever I wished, at however short notice, and I was sure, as I looked back fondly at the house from the end of the long avenue, that I would do so, for I had become attached to it, and been in many ways protected and strengthened there, sheltered by the walls of the house and the affection of those good people.

I hoped to find a letter from Miss Monmouth of Kittiscar awaiting me, but there was none; I had no communication from anyone, but found only the empty-seeming rooms overlooking the wintry sky, the bare trees, and dark flowing river, and the footsteps of the lugubrious Threadgold on the stairs. I missed Pyre that night, the rooms, the warmth, the company. I went out for my supper, and sat in silence, reading a newspaper in the coffee house until very late, before going back to organise a few belongings, and make some brief arrangements.

It was early on a bright, spring-like morning that I set off again, for another railway station, and a train that was to take me on the long journey north, to Kittiscar.

I had taken books and journals to read in plenty and bought the daily newspapers at King’s Cross, but I scarcely glanced at them, I was so absorbed in watching the countryside of England from out the carriage window, noting with fascination every change of scenery, from plain to hill to river valley, open farmland to black industrial chimneyscape. It interested and pleased me as well as any exotic landscape of my past travels.

As we journeyed further north, the weather began to change too; the sky, at first clear and mild, grew stormy, and I saw trees bending and tossing in the wind. Rain came, lashing the train windows, streams were rushing in angry spate down hillsides. But then we were out of it, and the clouds shifted again; I saw snow on the tops of the far hills.

I had consulted maps and guide books and found that a branch line would take me direct to the station at Raw Mucklerby, from High Beck Halt, though it seemed possible that I might have to wait some little time for a connection – the timetable was unclear. I meant to put up at the Inn which Sir Lionel’s friend had spoken of, and set out to Kittiscar on the following morning.

The light began to fade for the last hour of the journey, and there were flurries of hard, stinging snow on the wind. But I was still exhilarated by the views, the grand, wild, open scenery of bare hills and moors, with greystone walls and small flinty villages and isolated farmhouses huddled into the lee of the slopes. There were sheep and, here and there, the sight of a solitary cart, or traveller on foot or horseback, but once we had left the last small market town, the country was for the most part bare, bleak and empty.

It was a little after four when the train stopped and I heard ‘High Beck Halt. High Beck,’ being called along the platform. I was the only one to alight and, after a moment, the train gathered steam again and pulled away. I stood, with my coat collar turned up against the bitter wind and snow blowing towards me down the line.

There was a single platform, and a small wooden building that served as waiting room and ticket office together, with a meagre fire of hard little coals sputtering in the iron grate. I sat down on the bench. There were cracks and chinks in the window frames and under the door through which the wind whistled and moaned, cold as a knife blade. But, with every mile further north I had come, the higher my spirits had lifted, and, seeing the open moors all around me, I had begun to feel a deep contentment. I was home, this was familiar, I belonged in these places, though they were as different as anywhere on earth could be from the landscapes in which I had lived as long as I could clearly remember. The wind, the cold, the loneliness of this place did not disturb me, nor was I at all troubled by any thoughts of what might lie ahead.

I sat for some while, deep in thought and dreams about Kittiscar. No one came into the waiting room, no train drew in at the station. Outside, it was growing darker.