The Silence of Ghosts Read online

  Jonathan Aycliffe was born in Belfast in 1949. He studied English, Persian, Arabic and Islamic studies at the universities of Dublin, Edinburgh and Cambridge, and lectured at the universities of Fez in Morocco and Newcastle upon Tyne. The author of nine full-length ghost stories, he lives in the north of England with his wife. He also writes as Daniel Easterman, under which name he has penned several bestselling thrillers.

  By the same author

  writing as Jonathan Aycliffe

  Naomi’s Room

  Whispers in the Dark

  The Vanishment

  The Matrix

  The Lost

  The Talisman

  A Shadow on the Wall

  A Garden Lost in Time

  writing as Daniel Easterman

  The Seventh Sanctuary

  The Ninth Buddha

  Brotherhood of the Tomb

  Night of the Seventh Darkness

  The Last Assassin

  THE SILENCE OF

  GHOSTS

  Jonathan Aycliffe

  Constable & Robinson Ltd

  55–56 Russell Square

  London WC1B 4HP

  www.constablerobinson.com

  First published in the UK by Corsair

  an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd, 2013

  Copyright © Jonathan Aycliffe, 2013

  The right of Jonathan Aycliffe to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in

  Publication Data is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978-1-47210-512-7 (paperback)

  ISBN: 978-1-47210-906-4 (ebook)

  Typeset by TW Typesetting, Plymouth, Devon

  Printed in the UK

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Cover by JoeRoberts.co.uk

  For Beth, my blithe spirit, yet never silent, with love

  The Ullswater Diaries of Dominic Lancaster RN: An Introduction

  I hope you have a strong stomach, at least a stronger one than mine. The following pages do not make easy reading, and although I have done no more than edit them, I would not willingly return to them. And when at last you come to the end of them, I think you too may have no wish to set eyes on them again. For all that, I have published them in an attempt to set the record straight and to allow my grandfather an opportunity to speak out of the grave, to set the events of seventy years ago before the eyes of a younger generation. Looking again at what I have just written, I fancy I have mixed my metaphors. It is not a strong stomach you will need, but rather, strong nerves. There is little of the gory in what follows. No blood to speak of, nothing grisly, nothing blood-curdling. Yet, I urge you not to read the diaries by a dim light in darkness, or in those unsettled hours when the sun sets or the white moon rises over the moving sea, or when there is music in bewildered places, when you are alone and the cat scratches at the door.

  What you have in front of you are wartime diaries kept by my late grandfather Dominic Lancaster, who died at the age of ninety-two in a long white bed at the Eden Valley Hospice just outside Carlisle. He died in some discomfort from tuberculosis. The disease had lain dormant in his lungs since the Second World War, or so his doctors told him. How they could tell, I really don’t know. Of course, as you will see for yourself when you read his account of things, TB wasn’t the only thing he brought with him out of the conflict.

  What really killed him, in my opinion, was the death of my grandmother Rose seven months earlier. She had kept him going all those years, she had been there to whisper soothing words when he woke at night screaming, in a cold sweat, when he came to her in the middle of the day, trembling because he had seen something in the garden or round a corner of the house. He clung to her, and I believe he spoke to her, told her his secrets when he would divulge none of them to the rest of us. As a child, I loved Rose more than I loved my own mother. Even my father liked her, and he liked nobody, least of all my grandfather.

  When he died, I became his sole heir. The port importing business and the family house in London’s Bedford Square passed to me rather than to my father, who was ill and had retired some years earlier. He had moved to Cornwall, to an old fisherman’s house in St Ives. My mother had returned to France after their divorce, and I saw little of them both. I inherited the summer house on St Bees Head in Cumbria, where my grandfather and his beloved Rose had spent their later years together. And I was given charge of another house, one of which neither Dominic nor Rose had ever spoken to me. It was not mentioned in grandfather’s will, but our lawyers found it in a separate, older document, and by legal calculation they decreed that it fell to me by default, as my father knew nothing of it either. I had no aunts or uncles who might have shed light on this, and at first I thought little of it. It cannot, I thought, have been of much importance, perhaps it was little more than a fancy hut tricked out for holiday visits spaced out by great gaps as the years passed, and wholly neglected in the end. Later, I was to know better. Later I was to read my grandfather’s trembling record of the time he had spent there, unsuspecting.

  According to the will, this house was situated in the Lake District, on the shores of Ullswater, half in the beech trees and oaks of Hallinhag Wood and half by the path that leads from St Peter’s Church in Martindale to Sandwick Bay. A letter accompanied the will, in which it was explained that this dwelling was called Hallinhag House and that it had been in the family since long before my grandfather’s time. The letter added that it was my grandfather’s dearest wish that I should see to its demolition. This was, he said, something that should have been done long ago, but for some reason he could not accomplish it in his lifetime. The house, he wrote, was not fit to live in.

  It puzzled me that we had never visited it when I was growing up, even though it was not situated at a very great distance from my grandparents’ holiday home on St Bees Head, a place we often visited. Nor had my father or mother spoken even once of it, nor my grandfather or grandmother ever let me know of its existence. It was not until I read his diaries that I understood better why Dominic had remained silent.

  As a boy I had known my grandfather well. My father was often away on business, and my mother was greatly involved with her political work, so it often fell to my grandfather and grandmother to take their places. They lived in London then, as our family had done since the eighteenth century, and for many years he was Chief Executive of the Lancaster port importing business. He took the firm over during the Second World War, and brought Lancaster Port House through those lean and difficult years. My father took over when grandfather retired in his late sixties. He, Grandmother Rose and I often travelled to the Lakes together, though never to Ullswater. Our lakes were, in the main, Coniston Water and Windermere, not far from Ullswater. Looking back, I see that he avoided Ullswater deliberately. I once asked him where Wordsworth had seen his daffodils, and he professed not to know, for all that he read the poet regularly and knew everything about his life. The daffodils were on Gowbarrow Fell, about four miles from where Hallinhag House was situated. They grow there today in multitudes, as golden and
dancing as ever, spreading among the trees with each spring that passes.

  When the more complicated side of my inheritance had been sorted out – my grandfather’s solicitor was an efficient yet kindly man who had dealt with our family for a great many years, just as his father and grandfather had done before him – I decided to pay a visit to my mysterious Ullswater house, filled with curiosity as to its size and condition. Despite the inheritance, money was short, and I was half inclined to ignore my grandfather’s wishes if the house turned out to be viable. The Lakes were always popular with holidaymakers, especially the sort who wear woolly hats, lug heavy rucksacks up impossible slopes, and shove their tender feet into stout walking boots from Berghaus. I entertained hopes of a dwelling that I could put into a state of good repair and then rent or sell outright as a holiday home to some lucky family from London or Newcastle.

  I arrived late one morning in September and stopped at Pooley Bridge, at the north end of the lake. There, I was given directions to head for the small village of Howtown, which I reached along a narrow country road that wound along the eastern shore. Ullswater appeared through the gaps in the trees – a grey, narrow lake hemmed in by undulating fells, with the mountains of the Helvellyn range to one side. They say it’s the most beautiful lake in Britain, so I was keen to get on one of the famous steamers and go for a cruise. On its rippling waters the little boat forged its way bravely from Howtown to Pooley Bridge. Autumn lay on the lake like grey flannel, and a stiff wind threw sharp waves against the steamer’s side.

  I checked in at the ivy-covered Howtown Park Hotel, where I stayed to take lunch. Once I finished, I went to reception and asked a pretty young woman if she could direct me to Hallinhag House. She looked at me blankly and said she had never heard of a place by that name. Before I could read her the directions I’d taken from the solicitor’s document, she murmured an apology and headed through a door that fell quietly shut behind her. When she returned two minutes later, she was accompanied by a much older man, who introduced himself as the hotel porter. He was frail-looking, with sallow skin and rheumy eyes, and I wondered how he had the strength to carry guests’ luggage.

  ‘My granddaughter tells me you’re looking for a house here in Howtown,’ he said, stretching out a bony hand to shake mine.

  ‘Not quite in Howtown,’ I corrected him. ‘It’s in the woods between here and somewhere called Hallinhag. That’s where the house gets its name from, Hallinhag House. It belongs to my family, the Lancasters.’

  I was about to explain things further, but one look at the old man’s face stopped me in my tracks. It was as if he’d seen a ghost or as though my family name had aroused in him an unpleasant memory or a cause for deep revulsion. Nobody had ever looked at me in that way before.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘You look upset. Have I said something wrong?’

  He turned to his granddaughter. I could see that she too had been struck by the rapid change in his demeanour.

  ‘Grandfather,’ she said, ‘whatever’s up? The gentleman only asked where his house is. He’s asking directions, that’s all. Are you feeling all right?’

  ‘Fine,’ he snapped, ‘I’m fine. Never felt better. But I’ll be more myself once I get out of here. I’d thought that wretched place long forgotten.’

  He looked at me again.

  ‘And it was forgotten until you mentioned it just now. Just what do you plan to do with it?’

  His abruptness took me aback, but I squared up to him.

  ‘It’s really none of your business,’ I replied, ‘but since you’re in such a state about it, you may as well know that I’m thinking of turning it into a holiday cottage for myself, or I might sell it to someone looking for a Lakeland home. But I haven’t seen it yet. Perhaps you can think of a more urgent use for it.’

  He went on looking at me, the anger in his eyes clear to see.

  ‘Have it knocked down, sir, what there is left of it. If you can find anyone willing to do the job, that is, for no one from Howtown or Pooley Bridge will touch it. It should have been knocked down years ago, sir. Now, if you’ll excuse my rudeness, I have to get back to my chores. I’m sorry I can’t be of further help to you.’

  With which he turned and went back through the door he’d come in by. The young woman watched him go, her eyes wide and her mouth gaping. I could see she was genuinely upset, but I said nothing more of her grandfather’s behaviour.

  ‘Please don’t mind him, sir,’ she said. ‘He’s an old man and he’s getting a bit soft in the head. But he means no harm.’

  I reassured her that the outburst had left me unaffected, but inwardly I was still shaking from its vehemence, from the implied warning his words had contained. I tried to shrug it off, but I was like a small child whistling in the dark. I could not cast off the sense that the old man’s words had meant something quite concrete, if only I could divine what that something was.

  The girl told me to wait, then rushed outside and came back with a young man, evidently the hotel gardener. A stout young man, tall and heavily built, he seemed unlikely to be anything but level-headed, and when I asked him for directions, he did not hesitate to tell me how to find my house. But when he was done and stood at the door, about to return to his digging and hoeing, he screwed his eyes up like someone reaching a decision, and he looked hard at me as if I was a weed that resisted all attempts to kill it.

  ‘Don’t think to spend the night there,’ he said, his voice strained. ‘And be careful who you speak to.’

  ‘Do you mean it’s haunted?’ I retorted. ‘Is that what all this is about? Some story for Hallowe’en that you locals all think is true?’

  ‘It’s not my place to say, sir. We mostly gives it a wide berth. I couldn’t say whether it’s haunted or not. No one I know has ever set foot in the place.’

  He stepped away from me again, taking lengthy strides. I saw him take up the long shafts of a wheelbarrow into which he had been heaping leaves. A dog followed him, then dashed forward to sniff eagerly at the contents of the barrow. It was a large Münsterländer, full of curiosity and drive, like others of the breed. I wondered if our gardener went hunting with him.

  Thanking the receptionist for her initiative, I left alone, following the directions I’d just been given. The houses of Howtown fell away quickly. A gravel pathway led me to the lake side. Where it turned along the lake, the last houses disappeared and I was forced to work my way slowly through sturdy trees that bravely tried to bar my way. I recognized oaks and beeches, with birches dotted here and there among them.

  In the end, Hallinhag House proved easy to find. I came to a large clearing in which stood a considerable stone-built house. It stood two storeys’ high and was built on a platform of grey stone that must have been taken from a nearby quarry. The house had been roofed in local slate, but I noticed that many of the tiles had fallen and that moss and sundry weeds had taken up residence across the gaps and even on the original slate itself.

  For all that I had just come from bright daylight, the clearing in which I now stood was mired in gloom. I had come well prepared, since I’d guessed there would be neither heating nor lighting inside. I retrieved my large Maglite torch from its canvas bag and switched it on. A little brought down by my two conversations at the hotel, I felt my spirits lift as I held the torch high and watched the powerful beam shine on the façade of the building. Long and heavy, the Maglite was as much a weapon as a torch, and I felt sure that I could see off any intruders who might show up, perhaps locals aggrieved by my opening the house against their clear wishes.

  The front door seemed to be locked at first. I cursed the solicitor for not having given me the key. But another glance told me that, key or no key, the door would be solidly jammed. I had no idea when anyone had last lived here, but I could see at once that it hadn’t been for several decades. I stepped back a few feet and rushed at the door, crashing into it with my right shoulder. It groaned and stood its ground, so I stepped back further and
ran at it harder. Suddenly it gave way, leaving me to stumble into a wide hallway that had been plunged in darkness for who could say how long. I let the torchlight roam in a circle, picking out a broad staircase that rose to a landing and then twisted to the left and disappeared into yet more darkness that lay beyond the reach of my torch.

  The pervasive gloom, the thick layers of dust, the cobwebs hanging in festoons everywhere, the grimness caused by the absence of much external light, the grime on the few cracked window panes that were left, the ubiquitous patches of damp – all these led me to despair and to a growing conviction that I had made a mistake. Hallinhag House, I realized, was beyond repair, at least so far as my budget allowed. I had already moved into the family apartments in Bedford Square. But I doubted that the eventual sale of Hallinhag would realize sufficient funds to spend on what could prove to be a bottomless pit. Not just that, but I would be undertaking the repair of a house with a bad reputation, a haunted house, perhaps, a house where something terrible may have happened, a murder or a suicide. Or perhaps nothing at all. The house’s reputation was very likely nothing more than the result of local gossip. Whatever the locals thought or said or insinuated, I was too much of a rationalist to listen to their fears. That was then, of course: I know better now.

  Slowly, I explored the house, walking through a shifting pattern of light and dark, chased by shadows, dispelling them with blows of the long beam that sliced the gloom. Everywhere I went I was met by patches of ingrained damp and cobwebs, and in the torchlight I could see spiders as they scuttled away from me. I have to admit that I don’t much like spiders: their presence was the most unpleasant aspect of my exploration.

  To my great surprise, the rooms were still filled with furniture. Chairs, sofas, beds, tables, curtains – all stood or hung as though untouched since my grandfather had abandoned Hallinhag House. Not for the first time, I felt frustrated by the vow of silence he must have imposed on himself. Only he had known whatever stories belonged to these shadows, what events had happened around this furniture, who had sat in these chairs, bathed in this bathroom, slept in these beds, who had been born here, who had died here.