The Silence of Ghosts Read online

  A war is being waged, but we have seen true horror here on the shores of a placid English lake. Bombs fall on London, but true terror lurks between these walls. I would endure the bombing without complaint. But we seem trapped here, at least until there is enough petrol. Dr Raverat may know where I can get some.

  One good thing: Octavia’s hearing aid arrived by the morning post. I had mentioned it to my parents, and they must have gone at once to order it from a centre that opened recently in Kensington. One part goes round the back of Octavia’s ear, and this is attached by a cord to a box containing a battery, which sits in the pocket of her dress. I was inclined at first to leave the whole thing in the box it was delivered in, but Rose thought it might help to distract Octavia, and it has done. Rose has had to go to the doctor’s house and then out to visit half a dozen patients. She’ll return later if she can. I wish she would make an excuse and get back here straight away. Without her, I have had to experiment with Octavia’s aid alone. She says she can hear sounds like banging or bumping, and when I speak she can hear distinct noises. Since she can read my lips pretty well, I have spent the morning with her saying simple words that she recognizes on my lips, so she can start to link these to the sounds she hears in her ears. She has already started to identify several words, and it seems to get easier each time I try. It will be a long road, I can see that, but I am excited about the possibilities this opens up to her, once she has had professional instruction.

  Excited and fearful. She has already been hearing things even Rose and I can’t hear, and I can’t make up my mind whether the hearing aid will increase her ability to hear the dead or make that less likely, by bringing her nearer to the hearing world the rest of us inhabit.

  * * *

  Rose found an excuse to hand her afternoon visits over to Betty, another nurse. Betty is a newly-arrived trainee with the Civil Nursing Reserve, whom Rose has been training. She’s from Keswick, where she spent time with the St John Ambulance Brigade. She can handle the routine visits, with advice from Rose.

  We talked again about the situation.

  ‘There is something we need to do,’ Rose said.

  ‘One of us,’ she went on, ‘has to go to the Public Library in Carlisle. We need to know more about this part of Ullswater, more about Hallinhag House, about its history, whether there have been disturbances like this before, whether the names Adam, Clare, Helen and Margaret mean anything and have any connection with the house, alone or taken together.’

  ‘I can do that,’ I said, ‘provided I can get to the library.’

  She took a deep breath. She was sitting on the sofa beside me, and she stretched out her hand and touched mine. Her physicality gave me a sensation of reassurance and prospect after the things I had seen and heard but never felt the night before.

  ‘I think we need to invite Hilary Mathewman back here. In fact, I’m certain we have to do so, and apologize to her for dismissing her opinions so abruptly.

  I opened my mouth to protest, and as quickly closed it. Whatever rationality I had possessed had gone for ever.

  ‘As I said before,’ Rose went on, ‘she has a good knowledge of local history. Surely you can’t have any objection now to seeing her. She got it right about the house. I wish we’d listened to her before.’

  I snorted.

  ‘You mean you wish I’d listened to her before.’

  ‘I love you, Dominic Lancaster. That doesn’t mean I have to agree with everything you say.’

  ‘She may know how to get rid of these creatures,’ she went on. ‘Or how to persuade them to leave.’

  ‘Persuade them to leave?’ I almost exploded.

  ‘Don’t tell me you think these things are in any way benign, Dominic. I have never felt such a presence of evil in my life. If I have ever felt something satanic, that’s what they are.’

  ‘I just meant . . . that they seem pitiful wretches, just as we thought at first. Poor children, malnourished, badly treated.’

  ‘But they aren’t real children, Dominic . . .’

  ‘They are the ghosts of real children. All four of them must have lived at some time, a hundred years or more ago. They may have died from hunger or some sort of mistreatment. If we knew what, it might help us in our search for an answer.’

  Mrs Mathewman will be with us this evening at seven o’clock. Rose has explained things to her in full, and she has said it’s urgent that we act straight away. She’s preparing now, she doesn’t say how. The house is quiet, and Octavia says she can’t hear anything. She wants me to practise more with her hearing aid, and she seems to have settled down since last night. She’s looking forward to Mrs Mathewman’s visit.

  Later

  Hilary Mathewman turned up on time, driving her car, a little Morris Eight tourer, which she says does forty-five miles to each gallon, an important consideration in these days of fuel rationing.

  Rose and I went out to meet her, where a rudimentary strip of tarmac runs alongside the lake. Rose slipped her arm round my waist and I bent over to kiss the top of her head with a slightly shaking hand. Against her advice, I had taken some whisky to steady my nerves. As we drew apart, Hilary – as she told me to call her – came up to us, her right hand held out to shake ours.

  ‘Have there been any further manifestations?’ she asked.

  I shook my head.

  ‘Nothing all day.’

  She nodded.

  ‘But you’ve not gone upstairs?’

  ‘No. It would be hard work for me. I haven’t tried to go up there yet. Rose thinks I need to be steadier on my legs before I can tackle stairs.’

  ‘She’s quite right. But I wouldn’t advise it anyway. Going up there, I mean, dodgy legs quite apart.’

  ‘When I get inside,’ she continued, ‘I’ll go up there again myself. How is Octavia?’

  ‘Her asthma seems much better,’ I said.

  ‘No, I didn’t mean the asthma. How is she dealing with what she hears and sees in there? It’s a lot for a little girl to cope with. And finding her little friend is a ghost, that she has been dead for a very long time.’

  ‘She’s frightened,’ I said. ‘I’ve tried to reassure her, but she’s still frightened. At the same time, she’s pining for the little girl called Clare. Clare is the first proper friend Octavia has ever made, and she minds terribly that she can’t go about with her, holding hands as they used to.’

  ‘That’s understandable,’ Hilary commented. ‘I would suggest taking her somewhere else for tonight, while we do this thing. But I need her, and I want your permission to have her stay.’

  ‘You mean, the séance?’

  She shook her head. In the darkness, I could barely see her.

  ‘I don’t do séances,’ she said. ‘I’m not a medium. If necessary, I’ll bring one in. But I want to try this first. What I do is simpler than that. I experience the house and whatever is in it. I have done this about five times before. Then we sit together and try to communicate with whatever haunts this place, and ask it to leave. That may not be easy, but it’s worth a try. I suspect the real culprit, the evil thing we’ve felt, will not turn out to be the children, but if we can push it out it may well take the children with it.’

  I frowned.

  ‘Why do you need my permission to have Octavia stay through this?’

  ‘Because she is the focus for what has been happening. Trust me. Whatever is here will still be here if she leaves. But the manifestations only started when she arrived.’

  ‘I arrived at the same time.’

  She shook her head. Stars hung down from the night sky, drowning in the waters of a full moon. A barn owl called among the trees, and above it I could hear the clear high cries of a cloud of soprano pipistrelles.

  ‘Whatever these things are, it is not you they want. Not yet. It is Octavia, because in her deafness she alone can hear them. Now, I think it’s time we went inside. Octavia shouldn’t be left on her own for long at night.’

  The door was op
en. As we went inside, Hilary suddenly stopped, as if listening for something.

  ‘It has started,’ she said. ‘Let’s not waste any time.’

  I could detect nothing, either aurally or visually, but Hilary’s sense of urgency communicated itself to me. I closed the front door and the three of us walked down the candlelit hallway. We found Octavia where we had left her, at the far end of the dining room, carefully picking through the pieces of her jigsaw. I noticed that she had removed her hearing aid. She looked up and smiled at Hilary. It was a very open, genuinely delighted smile.

  ‘We may as well sit here,’ said Hilary, pulling out a chair and sitting at the table. We followed suit.

  ‘Octavia, dear,’ she said, twisting round to face my sister, ‘why don’t you put your jigsaw away? Just the box.’

  Octavia nodded and did as she was told.

  We settled down. No attempt was made to hold hands. We did not dim the lights, though the oil-lamps we lit here were low when compared with the electrical lighting we had at home, and a light golden glow came from the blazing fire, which had been lit some hours earlier. Our visits in the past had always been in the spring and summer, and for me as a child the candles and hurricane lamps that we lit late in the evening had been an important part of the adventure of coming here.

  No one spoke at first. We could hear nothing bar the cold west wind soughing through the trees around us. It sounded chill as it blew flat across the waters of the lake, but its force was broken by the oaks and birches that formed a barrier between the lake and the fell that climbed high above us. To begin with, it seemed as though nothing was happening. I thought that, quite possibly, Hilary Mathewman’s presence was sufficient to dispel whatever hauntings there might have been. Octavia sat quietly, and I thought she had possibly fallen asleep. Rose sat close to me and held my hand, not in any promise of a séance, but rather to reassure me. Her breathing was tight, like my own.

  Then somewhere far away, but within the house, a thin voice began to sing. None of us could make out the words at first, so thin and soft were they. To begin with, I thought it a single child’s voice, as a soloist might sing in a choir. It was a lilting song, and it came towards us slowly. As it approached, I slowly made out other voices, quite how many I could not be sure, all singing low, all singing in perfect harmony, with now one, now another breaking through. The tune was catchy, but unfamiliar. Then I began to make out some words. Hilary looked at me and whispered.

  ‘It’s a children’s song,’ she said. ‘It’s called “The Carrion Crow”, but it makes little sense. It was popular at the beginning of the last century, in Jane Austen’s time.’

  Had they died all that time ago? I asked myself.

  There was no way of telling where the voices came from. Our candles were burning straight up, the flames like little golden rods. I could hear the words now, as if they were in the room. They sang like children who have been taught the words of a song without understanding it.

  A carrion crow sat upon an oak

  Fol de rol, de rol, de rol, de ri do

  Watching a tailor cutting out his cloak

  Sing heigh ho! the carrion crow, Fol de rol, de rol, de rol, de ri do.

  Wife, wife! bring me my bow

  Fol de rol, de rol, de rol, de ri do,

  That I may shoot yon carrion crow

  Sing heigh ho! the carrion crow, Fol de rol, de rol, de rol, de ri do.

  The tailor he shot and miss’d his mark, Fol de rol, de rol, de rol, de ri do

  And shot his own sow quite through the heart

  Sing heigh ho! the carrion crow, Fol de rol, de rol, de rol, de ri do.

  They appeared at the top of the room, all four of them, their arms intertwined, and I saw at once that the clothes they wore were grave clothes and that they had been in the ground for well over a hundred years. Their song shifted, and now they sang only ‘Sing heigh ho! the carrion crow, Fol de rol, de rol, de rol, de ri do’. Their faces were greyish-white and their eyes were pink and their hair fell lank and dirty round their shoulders.

  I looked across the table at Hilary Mathewman. Her calm had left her, and she seemed badly frightened. I was frightened enough myself, and another glance confirmed that Octavia and Rose were as rigid with fright as before. I also noticed that a bad smell was filling the room, a smell of decay. It was as if these were not ghosts but actual bodies of the dead translated from their graves, yet they seemed in other respects alive, for they walked and sang as they might have done in life.

  And then they began to dance, shod feet clapping against the floor, sticks brought out from nowhere to join in the dance, circling and circling without growing dizzy. I was reminded of the dance in my dreams. They moved in a circle and their faces were wreathed in smiles, but I did not find them harbingers of joy.

  At that moment, Octavia said something very low, something I could not make out. It seemed to mean something to the children, though, for no sooner had Octavia spoken it than they started to retreat. The choking smell went with them. They faded into the darkness at the far end of the room, then stood still and fixed their eyes on us, like smoke rising in one place, or shadows converging.

  It seemed the greatest possible relief. Had Hilary done something to send them away, or had it been Octavia’s short exclamation that had repelled them? It didn’t really matter, for this might be the last we would see of them, fading, weakening. Hallinhag House would be fit to live in again.

  Or so I thought.

  ‘Hilary,’ I asked. ‘Is this the end of it? Will they just leave now, go back to wherever they came from?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Dominic, but this is only the beginning. This is not a séance. Let’s say it’s just a trial of strength. The children don’t have anywhere to go to. Hallinhag House is their home. Don’t you know that ghosts don’t wander far?’

  ‘How can that be? There are no bodies buried here.’

  She half smiled and shook her head.

  ‘Have you examined the attic?’

  ‘I didn’t know we had one.’

  ‘You do. I have found the attic by looking at the house from outside. It’s a matter of finding the entrance.’

  I was – and still am – sceptical. I had been upstairs and downstairs many times in my childhood, yet I had never noticed anything of the sort, nor had anybody spoken of one. Since I can’t get either down or up for the moment, I prefer to leave any discoveries till later.

  Rose turned to Hilary.

  ‘Why did they come here in the first place? To this room? We didn’t invite them, did we? What about you, Hilary?’

  Hilary pointed at Octavia.

  ‘She is their host,’ she whispered. ‘Her presence brings them here from time to time.’

  As she spoke, I became aware of sounds upstairs. I looked down the room to see the four ghostly children fade and disappear. Without preamble, the room grew bitterly cold despite the log fire burning fiercely in the hearth. Then the fire went out. Moments later, all our lamps and candles were extinguished, as if by a stiff wind, though a profound stillness continued to lie across the room. Octavia cried out as if in physical pain. Rose took my hand and squeezed it tightly. There was another sound from upstairs. Not a footstep. More unformed. It was followed by a repetition of the same sound, this time accompanied by what sounded like a deep moaning. A moment’s silence, then a thump and a moan followed by what I can only describe as twittering.

  It was Hilary who responded to this first.

  ‘It’s coming down the stairs,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what the hell it is, but we should get out of here fast.’

  She was frightened. Rose dug her fingernails into my palm. As she did so, I remembered that my cigarette lighter was in my right-hand trouser pocket. I pulled it out and fumbled for the candle that had been sitting on the table next to me. I found it and clicked my lighter. Its flame seemed brilliant in the darkness, and the candle was soon alight as well. With these two flames we lit two of the lamps, then made
for the door, Rose constantly with me, holding me safe while I hopped and dragged my right leg. Hilary had Octavia in her arms. We opened the door and made for the hallway. The sound was louder here, and when I looked up the staircase I could make out a shape, large and inhuman, as it thumped and slithered its way down. We got to the front door and got outside. I shut it behind me, as if doing so would create a barrier against whatever was in there. Hilary led us to her car and we piled in, our hearts beating like flags snapping in a high wind. She started the engine just as we saw the front door open slowly, and drove off in a flurry as the opening widened to reveal shadow and something darker than shadow in the doorway.

  Sunday, 22 December

  Blencathra Cottage

  Pooley Bridge

  We spent the rest of last night in Hilary Mathewman’s cottage, all in one room, all shivering, all sleepless, all in a silence that went on and on, with only occasional interruptions. Hilary drove us there, missing collisions with trees and boulders every few seconds. She used her headlights, swearing at the Germans and whoever made the blackout rules. I expect she’ll have a visit from one of the wardens sometime today. There weren’t enough beds, but, quite frankly, I don’t think any of us could have had the patience to try one, to close their eyes and start to sleep. We’re all very tired now, but none of us can rest.

  I’ve decided to find some means to get back to London. First, I have to ring my parents. I won’t tell them anything about what has happened, just that I feel trapped at Ullswater and that Octavia misses them. The only phone Hilary knows of is at the Lakeside Inn. Rose will take me there later today, once she and Hilary have had a chance to get things straightened out here. She has offered to put us up for as long as we need, but I don’t want to be a burden. All the same, none of us wants to set foot in Hallinhag House again.