The Secret of Crickley Hall (63 page)

Pyke leaned towards them, sinister, threatening, yet his voice still pleasant. 'When I read the local rag's story of a haunting at Crickley Hall, two trespassing children claiming they had seen the ghost of a naked man in the house, I knew the ghost of Augustus Cribben had returned to Crickley Hall—perhaps it had never gone away! The newspaper story said a family was renting the house, a husband and wife with two daughters, one of them twelve years old, exactly my own age when I stayed here in 1943. It couldn't have been more perfect!'

The insanity in Pyke's eyes was dangerously bright.

'His plaguing of me had become more intense of late, more powerful, and now I understood why. The conditions had become so appropriate!'

'Mummy—' Loren began to say, but Pyke's zealous babble cut her off.

'Loren can substitute for me, don't you see? I was his favourite, but I know he'll accept another child in my place. I'm sure he will approve my sacrifice to him. Augustus will have his eleventh child and I'll finally be free.'

Eve could not help herself. 'You're completely mad. This whole thing is crazy. The police will find you. Lili will tell them you were here and attacked her. They'll lock you away for life.'

He actually chuckled. 'Would that really matter, if I was free of the hauntings? Perhaps even the dreams will stop when everything's resolved.' His face became artful. 'I'm prepared to take the consequences—after all, what's wrong with being pampered in an asylum for the next few years, because they will say I'm mad, won't they? I'll play the same game I think Magda Cribben has played all these years.'

He straightened and smiled as if pleased with himself. He took a step back and leaned against the landing railing behind him.

'You know I expected your husband to be here tonight,' he said. 'I had intended to get his permission to stay overnight to monitor the equipment I was going to set up around the house. When I was sure everyone was asleep I was going to steal Loren away from her bed and take her down to the cellar. When it was done, I was going to leave quietly.'

'They wouldn't put you in a psychiatric institute,' Eve said coldly. 'No, you'll rot in prison.'

'I don't think so.'

'I won't let you take my child!'
Eve shouted at him defiantly but more scared than she had ever been in her life, more scared even than the day Cam went missing, if that were possible (perhaps because then she had hope).

His reply was so twisted in logic and so affably put that a violent shudder ran through her.

He said: 'But, Eve, I only want
one
of your daughters.'

That was when she had no doubt at all that this man was
seriously
crazy, and all the more dangerous: he couldn't be reasoned with.

Lightning blazed against the window and thunder cracked almost immediately afterwards, momentarily diverting his attention.

'Run, Loren, run!'
Eve shouted and they both jumped to their feet, Eve pushing at her daughter's back to hurry her up the stairs.

But although surprised by their sudden break, Pyke's reaction was swift. Even before the thunder had rumbled away he had turned his sturdy walking stick upside down so that its curved handle was pointing away from him as he leaned forward. He hooked Eve's ankle with it and her own impetus brought her crashing down, jarring her chest and one elbow against the edges of the stairs.

'Do you want pain, Eve? Because I can give you pain,'
Pyke bellowed.

Loren's scream bounced off the walls, ceiling and flag-stoned floor. The girl stopped climbing and reached back for her mother, tugging at her arm to help her rise again.

'Leave me!'
Eve cried at her.
'Just run, get away!'

But Loren refused to leave her mother behind. She slipped a hand under Eve's shoulder and desperately tried to lift her.

The walking stick descended fast and struck Eve's back so that she sprawled on the stairs once more.

She half turned and kicked out, her foot hitting Pyke full in the stomach. He nearly toppled backwards, but somehow managed to regain his balance. Only slightly winded, he raised the heavy stick again.

Eve pulled herself free of Loren's clutching hands, turning all the way to defend herself. It was too late, though: the walking stick came down and hit her on the side of her head. She fell back and in a daze she heard Loren's frightened cry and then another, smaller voice, Cally's voice, yelling from the top of the stairs.

'Leave my mummy alone!'

Eve turned onto her stomach and tried to raise herself on hands and knee, but she was struck across the back of her shoulders next and everything went black.

•

The 'vision' swam back into Lili's head. She had lost it for a while as her other senses, the normal ones, began to resurface, leading her slowly towards consciousness. There was no choice but to accept the returning images…

The guardian who is called Augustus Cribben, still naked, his pale flesh scored with striped wounds and old scars, is collecting the small corpses that are scattered around the house.

He carries the children's bodies to the head of the cellar stairs, then bundles them down, their still warm bodies rolling over and over until there is a lifeless pile of them at the bottom. The roar of coursing water rises from the well and fills the chamber with its sound, for the river below is in tumult.

Susan Trainer is the last child to be gathered up and this one he drags across the flagstone floor because he has grown tired with all the killing and carrying, and the fiery demons inside his head refuse to give him peace. His mad eyes are bloodshot with the pain.

Cribben shuffles the corpse onto the top step, then pushes it over with his foot so that it tumbles down to join its companions in death.

He presses both hands against his temples as if to squeeze out the agony, but there is no relief

Shambling to the centre of the hall, he picks up the stick he had left lying there while he completed his body-disposal tasks. He shouts out as he flails his own flesh with it, not as a penance but as a distraction from the fiercer pain inside his skull.

After a short while, Cribben lumbers to the hall's broad stairway and climbs to the small landing. Rain gusts against the glass of the tall window with awesome force and the howling wind rattles the wood. He turns round to face the hall, the brutal studded cane held aloft as he stretches out his arms in adoration of Christ. He has discharged his duty.

He has offered up the souls of the children to his God. And found absolution for his own tortured soul.

Lili's 'vision' finally faded completely and she stirred on the drenched earth.

74: THE BRIDGE

Lightning lit up the house across the river and Gabe, who had been unable to make out the dark building through the heavy sheets of rain, took a moment to absorb the sight of it.
Yeah,
he thought drily,
it even
looks
like a haunted house, especially on a night like this.

The lightning stuttered and died, and as thunder shook the skies almost directly overhead, Crickley Hall all but disappeared into the murk once more. There didn't seem to be any lights on—no, if he looked hard, Gabe could just detect faint glows in some windows. But they were very dim and that wasn't because of the rain. He wondered if power from the main grid had failed and the house's generator had kicked in; if the machine wasn't running at full capacity it might account for the weak lighting.

Gabe leaned in close to his companion.
'You okay, Perce?'
He had to shout to be heard over the storm.

'I'm all right, Mr Caleigh,'
Percy yelled back.
'But I don't like the look of that river.'

He was right. They were standing in the roadway, the bridge and river only a few yards away. By the bright but rain-limited beam of Percy's torch Gabe could see the ferocious white spume that reared and tossed on the roiling water, whose level was almost up to the top of the river-banks. It didn't look like the swollen river would be contained for much longer.

The engineer had noticed the two cars in the short parking bay and he thought he had seen the small two-door Citroën before. The other vehicle, a dark-red Mondeo, he didn't recognize. Who the hell would be visiting on a night like this?

Gabe and Percy hadn't said much to one another as they had battled the storm, but the old gardener's concern over Crickley Hall had the American worried. The house had survived the previous flood, hadn't it? So Eve only had to get herself and the girls upstairs and trust in the building's solid, thick walls to withstand any floodwaters. Although power lines were vulnerable in this kind of weather, Gabe was also concerned that Percy hadn't been able to reach Eve by phone. He didn't like the idea of Crickley Hall being totally cut off.

The gardener directed the torchbeam towards the bridge ahead of them.

'I don't like the looks of that, either,'
he declared, and Gabe nodded. Nor did he.

Natural debris—branches, a small tree, shrubbery and no doubt dead animals—was piling up on one side of the bridge, and the structure itself was visibly unsteady, shaking as if about to break free of the concrete bases on both riverbanks. Crossing it was going to be a risk.

'Percy, we gotta get over the bridge right now, before it goes,'
Gabe shouted into the gardener's hood-covered ear.
'But, look, maybe you don't. No point in both of us chancing it.'

'I'll come along with yer, Mr Caleigh. We'll hafta' be quick though.'

Gabe didn't argue: there was no time. Soon the bridge was going to break away under the strain. He clamped his hand around the old man's upper arm.
'Let's go, then!'

Percy led the way, shining the torch down at the ground before them as they went. Gabe had never felt so wet in all his life: his reefer coat felt twice as heavy as normal and his hair was plastered to his scalp. Although his coat collar was up, rainwater still managed to soak his neck; his jeans were now a darker shade of blue and even the socks beneath his boots felt damp. They plodded over the muddy patch in front of the bridge and paused to make a closer assessment of the wooden structure's condition.

Percy stood to one side so that he could examine the thick stanchions supporting the bridge.

'One of 'em uprights has come away,'
he informed the engineer.
'The whole blamed thing's gonna' tear free afore long, but that were why it were built this way, so's it don't act like a dam.'

'That's helpful, Perce. Shall we get across now?'

Gabe placed a tentative foot on the sodden slippery boards. The bridge shook under him.

'Got an idea, Perce. Let's just run for it.'

Percy clapped him on the back and without another word they raced towards the other side of the bridge.

They almost made it together, but the surface was too slick with spray and slime. Percy's feet skidded from under him and he went down with a bone-rattling thud.

Gabe, who had made it all the way before his companion had fallen, turned back for him and as he reached down to haul Percy to his feet, the whole bridge lurched. The deck tilted and the engineer went down on one knee. Percy began to slide towards the left-hand rail and might have slipped through the struts had not Gabe grabbed him. Unbalanced himself, Gabe managed to clutch the limb of a tree that was poking through the struts on the right-hand rail. It jerked forward a little, then held firm, and Gabe was able to draw Percy towards him using the branch for leverage.

The bridge continued to lurch and tilt, and it was obvious to both men that the weakened structure was going to break away at any second.

'On your feet, Percy!'
Gabe yelled, one hand under the gardener's shoulder. Letting go of the branch with his left, he now grasped the top of the rail.

The other man rose shakily, using Gabe for support. A sharp judder, then another lurch. Something—a hefty tree branch probably—smashed against the engineer's curled fingers, but he ignored the pain, well aware that if he should let go, he and Percy would slide off the bridge into the water below, for the rail on the other side had broken, leaving a gaping hole just inches above the turbulent river.

He yanked Percy up all the way and shouted:
'Keep hold of my arm and work your way along it to the other bank!'

Percy didn't bother to reply: he followed Gabe's instructions. First he clung to the engineer's taut upper arm, moving along the elbow and then the wrist, his boots threatening to skid from under him with every step he took. When he reached Gabe's upraised fist holding the rail, he lunged for the right-hand rail and clung to it. He had stuffed the torch into one of his storm coat's huge pockets, so he had both hands free.

The bridge was now leaning perilously at one end, the nearest to the lane, and it began to sway with water splashing over its planks.

Percy quickly stumbled and slid his way towards the path, and finally he reached it. Even though he was out of breath and his arms and legs were shaking with the effort, he brought out the torch again and pointed it at Gabe, who was still struggling to pull himself along the rail, his feet constantly slipping on the wet boards. The incline was becoming more and more acute so that it was almost impossible for the engineer's boots to gain purchase, but he battled on, slowly drawing closer and closer to the bridge's end. Then, just as he was about to grab Percy's outstretched hand, the structure lurched once more, violently this time, and Gabe thought he would be swept away with it. He hadn't counted on the old gardener's tenacity, though.

Percy dropped the torch onto the ground and leaned forward as far as he could from the very edge of the path. He clasped Gabe's coat with both hands and, with surprising strength for a man of his age, pulled the engineer off the bridge.