The Whispers of Wilderwood Hall (5 page)

My wrists still ache from being wrenched. Mr Fraser sees me rubbing them and apologizes again.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” he says, embarrassment reddening his already ruddy cheeks. “Didn't mean to be so rough.”

Mum hands him a mug of tea and quickly sets him straight. “Oh, please don't apologize! If you hadn't grabbed Ellis when you did, she could've cracked her head really badly.”

“Yes, thanks,” I mumble shyly, and hide my red wrists behind my back. “I didn't know the fountain was there, hidden under all that ivy.”

I'm especially shy because Mr Fraser isn't alone. His son has come with him. His scruffy-haired,
bird-
eyed teenage son who saw me faint in the café yesterday, and stagger backwards – like a Mr Bean wannabe – into a disused pond this morning. Great. I'm so used to being known as an awkward, clumsy “beanpole” at school in London, and now it seems like I'll be known for that here too, once I start at Glenmill High…

“Funny the secrets you come across around an old place like this,” says Mr Fraser, shuffling his work boots on the floorboards of what was, once upon a time, the grand dining room of Wilderwood Hall. “Just glad me and Cameron came around the corner when we did.”

“Cam.” His son mumbles a correction to his name.

While I'd stood brushing ivy leaves out of my hair and off of my jumper, Mr Fraser and his son –
Cam
– had begun tugging roughly at the strands of vines, till the stone fountain began to reveal itself. They'd seemed pretty impressed at uncovering a chunk of the house's history. All
I
saw was a hunk of granite that had (shamefully) tripped me up while I wasn't looking.

“Exactly!” Mum says enthusiastically. “Anyway, talking about things you come across in an old place
like
this, wait till you see what's in the kitchen… Come and take a look.”

At first I think that Mum's talking about the titchy kitchen I vaguely looked in yesterday upstairs in the servants' quarters, the one that's ugly and basic and falling to pieces. But instead she waves us all out of the dining room, along the wide corridor, till we come to a simpler passageway on our left. From the position of it, I guess that it must lead through to the original kitchen in the East Wing.

“So, this place is what – about a hundred years old?” I hear Mr Fraser ask, as he strides along the cool grey flagstones, past doors painted a chipped and faded gloss green.

Cam is behind me, which is pretty awkward. Or unnerving. Or maybe a mix of both. He's probably looking at how tall and gangly I am and wondering how I can be related to such a tiny, pretty person as my mum. Meanwhile, I'm wondering where his dogs are, but I'm not about to ask him, no way.

“It's Edwardian, built in 1911, according to the deeds,” Mum chats easily as she leads the way. “The original owner was apparently a Mr Richards, from London. Do you happen to know anything else about Wilderwood?”

“
Not much, but then we only moved to Glenmill from Glasgow a couple of years back,” says Mr Fraser.

OK, so bang goes my theory about everyone in Glenmill having lived here for ever. Still, it might not apply to Cam Fraser and his family, but I bet it goes for everyone else, like the ancient waitress in the Cairn Café.

“Oh, really? So you're not quite up to speed with all the local history – or gossip, then?” Mum jokes, forgetting for a second who she's married to, and the fact that
we
might end up being the local gossip, if we're not already.

Mr Fraser laughs, charmed by Mum, I can tell.

“All I
did
hear was that it sat empty for decades,” he tells her, “till some hippy bloke bought it in the 1970s, I think it was, with a view to doing it up. He only lived in a few of the smaller rooms upstairs in this wing, apparently. Never had the money to do up the main house, I don't think.”

“Well, it
is
quite a project, but we're looking forward to it,” says Mum. “Anyway, here we are. What do you reckon to this, Ellis?”

I go to follow Mum and Mr Fraser into the large, echoing room, which is completely empty, apart from a mammoth black cooking range.

But
as I put my hand on the door frame, something happens. A sudden storm of noise hits me. Chatter. Clattering. A rush of water. A metallic-sounding bell ring-a-dinging incessantly. Then someone is holding my elbow – and I don't want them to.

“Ellis? Ellis, honey?”

Mum's voice cuts through the cacophony and it melts away as fast as it came, leaving me feeling clammy and crazy around the edges. I pull my elbow away from what I realize is Cam's hand. He's staring at me with those sharp eyes of his, like he's taking in every detail so he can tell his friends in the village all about me, all about us, later.

I'm suddenly angry as well as embarrassed and confused. What's Cam even doing here, anyway?
Did
he tag along with his dad 'cause he's sussed who Mum's married to? The estate agent was meant to be keeping it a secret. Still, stuff gets out – look at the photos in
Heat
. Except… Except maybe I left the magazine open on the tartan-covered table yesterday and blew the secret myself?

“I – I'm OK. I'm just a bit cold,” I say directly to Mum, pretending my hesitation is all to do with temperature and nothing to do with strange sounds
in
my head. (Maybe I
did
bump it in the fountain before Mr Fraser pulled me free. Or I could've got whiplash. That can make you feel pretty weird, can't it?)

Mum frowns, trying to use her parental intuition to figure out if I'm fibbing or not. Maybe I should get out of here, before the waves rush in…

“I'm just going to get changed into something warmer,” I say, pointing my thumb in the direction of the servants' quarters upstairs. “Where's my stuff?”

“Oh, I chose a really nice room for you, with the best views. The removal men put all your furniture and bags and boxes in already, so you'll find it OK,” says Mum. “And if you go through the big door in the passageway behind you, it'll take you straight to the back stairs, and save you trailing through the main house again.”

I nod and smile (or as close as I can manage) and turn to leave so Mum and Mr Fraser can discuss scaffolding and roof joists and damp courses in peace.

“Excuse me,” I mumble at Cam, and slither past him, pulling open the nearest heavy door, hoping madly it's the right one and that I don't have to
backtrack.
Luckily, it is, and I'm grateful for the cool bite of air on my hot cheeks as I stamp up the grey stone steps of the stairwell.

What exactly happened back there in the kitchens? I can't feel any bumps on the back of my head so I'm not sure if I can blame concussion. Maybe I'm just over-imaginative. That's what Granny called me, after I'd Skyped to tell her I'd won an inter-school poetry competition last term. Granny sat there in the Sydney morning sunshine and listened as I read out my poem about refugees, then told me I'd “always been an over-imaginative child”. I'd beamed and said thank you, but as soon as I'd finished the call, I'd wondered if it actually was a compliment. I'm never very sure with Granny; she's not a cuddly kind of grandmother – though I guess it's hard to cuddle someone when they live more than nine thousand miles away. But maybe Granny has a point. Maybe I
am
over-imaginative, if I'm hearing things that aren't even there…

I shake those thoughts from my head as I reach the vaguely familiar territory of the servants' quarters' corridor and start to hunt around for whichever room Mum's chosen for me. Nope, not here – Mum's turned this into a temporary living
room,
with our sofa and TV from London looking strangely at home. (More at home than I look, I bet.)

And not here; I've found myself back in Mum's bedroom, where I spent the night. The next door leads to the nasty '70s kitchenette; next to
that
is the bathroom (complete with original, and stained, Edwardian sink and loo, with a modern-ish shower stuffed in a corner). This next room is set up with a desk and more mood boards and is obviously Mum's nerve centre for the Shiny New Project.

All that's left are two doors facing each other at the end of the corridor, the end nearest the linking entrance to the main house. The first door I stick my head around reveals a dreary little space, with a small, cobweb-curtained window. It's obviously destined to be the spare room; our old futon is plonked in the middle of it, folded flat and waiting to be assembled. So I turn and cross the corridor to the only room remaining.

It's not a good start – I put my hand out to grab a doorknob but there isn't one. I stand back and check out the door in front of me; where a brass lock should be there's just a rectangular grooved outline, and some dents in the wood as if someone once hacked the whole thing off with a hammer.
And
the old green paint … it's not just faded and chipped like the other doors along the corridor, it's also blistered and blackened on the bottom half.

With a shiver, I push the battered door open and reluctantly step inside – and find myself in a room flooded with light. It's because of the pair of windows directly in front of me. They're not huge, but they're big enough to let sunbeams spill across the bed, chest of drawers and piles of boxes I last saw when I packed up my room back in London, back home. It's not till I walk over to the windows, till I've looked out at the view of the driveway, the swaying trees, the glimpse of buildings in the village beyond that I realize where I am.

I'm here. In the room with eyes. Ha! It looked so eerie from afar, and yet close up … it's so different.

I flip around and lean against the slim piece of wall between both windows and survey my new room. And a glimmer of hope fills my heart like a weak shaft of sunlight peeking through a skyful of lurking grey clouds.

You know, so far I've been
beyond
unimpressed by the echoing, elderly building site that Wilderwood is. But if I block that from my mind, I think I might come to like this one small part of it. My room at our
old
flat was at the front of our block, and overlooked by offices on the other side of the road. It was always in shadow. Not like this place, where I can see dust motes twirling gently in the air, air light with brightness streaming in from outside.

And the quiet … ! There's no roar of cars and vans, no bleeping of horns and meeping of reversing lorries. There's no sound at all. Apart from a sort of low-level buzzing, or humming, that's gently vibrating somewhere.

Has Mr Fraser already begun drilling something downstairs? I twist around and put my ear right against the wall.

And pull it away almost immediately.

It's voices. Voices whispering, whispering in the walls…

It's a miracle. I
can
get a signal in my room. Well, bizarrely, after moving around – including a stint standing (shaking) on my bed with my mobile held above my head – I've found the best place to get any bars is sitting hunched down on the floor by the door.

And miracle number two: Shaniya has forgiven me enough to talk to me.

“What did the voices say?” asks Shaniya. “WE ARE COMING FOR YOU, MWAH HA HA!”

Shaniya is always making jokes. I guess that's what makes our friendship work – she's loud and fierce and funny, and I'm … not. People say opposites attract, don't they? Though sometimes we
don't
get along. In Shaniya's case, when I have one of my sense-of-humour failures. Or do stuff like not invite her to my mum's star-studded wedding.

“No,” I reply, tucking my baggy jumper over my knees and turning myself into a woolly package. “I couldn't make out actual words. It was more like … like I was hearing some conversation in another room.”

I'd only heard the whisperings for a few seconds, but I'd been so freaked out by them I'd wanted to run downstairs and beg Mum to drive us back to our flat in London straight away. But that wasn't going to work, not when Mum had already given up the lease on our old place and handed in the keys. And even if it
was
possible, I couldn't physically ask her anyway; not when – as I could see out of the window – she was with Mr Fraser, excitedly pointing at bits of broken-down building, with Cam trailing uselessly behind them.

So my second-best option was to swallow my pride and call my best friend.

“Well, that's probably all it was, then! Gawd, you can be so dramatic sometimes, Ellis!” Shaniya laughs.

“I'm not trying to be dramatic,” I protest, feeling
ripples
of anxiety lap at my chest. “It's just that Wilderwood is really …
strange
. I don't know how I can ever get used to living here.”

“What – you can never get used to living in a giant mansion with more rooms than your family could ever need?” Shaniya teases me.