Haunted (29 page)

With a curious mixture of detachment and perplexity he asked: ‘Why? Why me?’

Her sigh was as weary as his question and Ash realized that Nanny Tess scarcely resembled the person he had first met at Edbrook, the reserved spinster, the proper maiden aunt.

‘An alliance,’ she said in answer.

He shook his head, not understanding.

‘An alliance of spirits,’ she went on, driving carefully through the deserted high street. ‘A joint game between them and another, someone they conspired with on the other side. Someone close to you, Mr Ash.’

The muscles at the back of his neck tensed, a coldness swept through him. A new, deeper, dread was aroused within him. His desire had been to return to the world of normality, and he was now there, that condition just outside the car windows, with the houses and the shops they passed, the street signs, lampposts, the everyday order of natural things; but the
abnormal
had accompanied him, was with him inside the vehicle. Nanny Tess’ voice was a drone, yet every word registered, part of him comprehending, part of him repudiating everything she said. And slowly, the dread began to overwhelm reason.

‘Their game was enhanced by your own total rejection of the spirit’s existence after death, a belief you’ve always hidden behind for your own protection. Isn’t that true? Hasn’t the guilt you felt over your own sister’s death made you erect a wall of non-belief?’ She continued, not waiting for a reply. ‘Aren’t you still, even after all these years, afraid that she’ll come back and demand retribution, make you pay for what you did to her? I told you the mind was a mysterious place . . .’

The car drew up outside the small railway station and through the entrance Ash saw a train waiting at the platform. But he sat there in the car, senses in turmoil. He was trembling, small, jerky shakes of his head refuting what she had told him.

Nanny Tess had become agitated, too, her distress shown in eyes that glistened wetly. ‘But it’s gone too far. I tried to control it, tried desperately, but as always, I gave in to them. My guilt is as bad as yours – I promised Isobel I would take care of them and I let them all die. Every one of them. How can I be forgiven?’

She pressed her forehead against the steering wheel, hiding her face between her arms. Her misery stretched the words so that Ash could barely understand what she was saying. ‘Now the worst has happened. Now there will be questions asked about Edbrook, about the Mariells.’

Through his shocked confusion, he managed to find some anger. ‘That’s the last thing I’d do, tell anyone what happened to me back there. Who the hell would believe me?’

‘
You still don’t understand, do you? The game has gone too far!
Someone else became involved, someone else whose heart isn’t as strong as yours.’

She raised her brow from her arms, her features wizened with torment, her hair straggled around wrinkled cheeks. Nanny Tess turned leisurely, although her dread-filled eyes dispelled any illusion of dispassion; her head craned round so that she could peer over her shoulder towards the back seat.

Even though he desperately did not want to, he was compelled to follow her gaze.

Edith Phipps stared at him from the back seat. Yet her eyes were as dull as slate, her jaw locked open with its upper set of teeth resting on her lower lip, the dislodged dentures ridiculing her death. But there was no slackness to her features, no corpse’s languor; if a corpse could have voice, then Edith would be screaming.

Ash recoiled against the dashboard. It was not horror that he felt, for there is a limit to even that extreme emotion; in those few frozen moments as he looked upon Edith’s stiffened body, his sensibilities were scoured by the utmost despair so that he was left empty and almost impassive.

But when he heard the titter that came from Nanny Tess and saw the madness that cavorted behind her old, frightened eyes, reality jolted him into action.

Ash fled from the car.

He pushed by the startled porter who was just entering the shady ticket hall from the platform. Ash heard the man curse and shout after him, but refused to stop. The train was beginning to move out, slowly trundling forward as though its burden were too great.

Grabbing a carriage doorhandle, Ash limped alongside the train, matching its speed so that he could pull the door open and scramble in. He nearly lost his footing as he did so, but managed to clutch the edge of the doorframe and haul himself up. He collapsed in a heap across the compartment seat, but quickly pushed himself upright as the carriage door swung shut with the train’s gathering momentum; his head lolled drunkenly against the high back of the seat. Ash listened to his own mumblings, the denial, the rejection, of all that had happened, his hands tugging at his open shirt collar as though breathing were difficult. Tepid sweat trickled into the hollow of his neck.

The train began to pick up a smoothness of rhythm, though its motion was still unhurried, and Ash thanked God that he was at last leaving this hell’s-place behind, leaving Edbrook and the terrors it held for him, the Mariells whose existence depended entirely on the remorse and fears of the living, the housekeeper aunt whose guilt-ridden grief eventually had deranged her mind. Leaving them all, leaving Christina . . .

Confusion, impressions, sensations, jibed at him. Too much had happened during that brief time at Edbrook to be accepted, or even acknowledged. He had suffered absolute fear, yet he had also succumbed to an intense loving. And had made love. But to what? An apparition? That wasn’t possible, surely that wasn’t possible.

He shook his head, a desperate motion. For he knew the truth of it.

Robert and Simon and Christina were ghosts, and together they had intrigued with another who had once been close to him, a sister who had despised him even beyond her own life, who had conspired against him from the grave. And that conspiracy had brought her haunting to a perverse reality.

He became rigid. With his back to the engine, his view was of the long empty platform steadily sliding away from him. But now a figure came into view, the man’s head turning with the passing of the train.

Robert Mariell smiled at Ash.

Soon another could be seen through the grimed compartment windows. Simon stood coatless, hands tucked into trouser pockets, his throat no longer scarred, his face no longer tilted. His grin was carefree as he watched Ash go by.

An empty stretch of concrete, then another person standing there, gazing up at the train with all the innocence of childhood. There was no ageing after death; she was still a little girl. Below the white dress, the one she had drowned in, she wore white ankle socks. Beside her, patient and unmoving, stood Seeker.

Ash lurched to the door window, wrenching it down with a guillotine’s thud. He leaned out, stretching a hand towards her.

‘
Juliet!
’ he screamed.

He could see her face clearly now, could discern the pretty features that his own mind had always blurred before, unwilling to recognize –
determined not to
– and thus acknowledge her unnatural existence. Her lips were perfectly clear as they twisted to a smile; and the malignity of the smile was just as plain.

The vision receded with the progress of the train, the dog a black mark frozen next to her.

Ash’s outcry was of aching sorrow. He called to her again, reaching towards the dwindling figure, tears streaking the dirt that smeared his face.

The hands that clawed at his shoulders from inside the compartment were vicious and strong. He clung to the window’s frame, afraid he would be thrown out onto the rushing ground below. He fought back, managing to inch his body round so that he could face his assailant. Cruelly sharp fingernails raked his face.

Christina’s eyes were closed almost to ugly slits. Her face was unmarked, her body untouched by fire, and yet this was still a different Christina from the one he had come to know. Before him raged the darker side of her earthly nature, the flawed creature whom the Mariell family had endeavoured to conceal from outsiders. Her hair was a wild mass around her face, her mouth sneered to a grimace. The glitterings in those blue-grey eyes were the highlights of her madness, her beauty hidden behind a harridan’s mask.

She drove at him relentlessly, her gown of pure, flowing white tossed as though by the wind, scratching and spitting so furiously that he was forced into a corner. He held up his arms to protect his face, allowing her to beat him, too afraid to retaliate. But as the pain became intolerable, he began to react, began to flail out at her, shouting her name, frustration and rage overwhelming his fright.

And although he found himself striking at emptiness, he could not stop beating the air.

Moments passed before, exhausted, he allowed his arms to drop away. And further moments went by as his eyes warily searched the compartment for her. Eventually, he straightened, his body swaying with the roll of the carriage. He felt the wetness trickling on his cheek and he raised a trembling hand to touch.

For a long time afterwards Ash stared at the blood on his fingertips.

Night has begun its claim as the wind sighs along the pitted drive towards the large neglected house. A motor car from another era stands beneath the steps that lead into the house.

The building seems desolate, its interior cluttered with shadows.

But someone moves through its darkness, journeying from room to room, a woman of late years who hums a melancholy tune, a rhyme with which she once lullabied the children of this place; but that was long ago and the children are no more.

With her, the old woman carries a box of matches. She strikes each one and leaves it burning where she pleases.

The stone shell that is called Edbrook blackens with the fading light. But in a window there rises a flickering orange glow. Soon that warm glow is joined by another.

And then by another.

James Herbert
is not just Britain’s number one bestselling writer of chiller fiction, a position he has held ever since publication of his first novel, but is also one of our greatest popular novelists, whose books are sold in thirty-three foreign languages, including Russian and Chinese. Widely imitated and hugely influential, his twenty-three novels have sold more than forty-eight million copies worldwide.

Also by James Herbert

The Rats

The Fog

The Survivor

Fluke

The Spear

The Dark

Lair

The Jonah

Shrine

Domain

Moon

The Magic Cottage

Sepulchre

Creed

Portent

The Ghosts of Sleath

’48

Others

Once

Nobody True

The Secret of Crickley Hall

Graphic Novels

The City

(Illustrated by Ian Miller)

Non-fiction

By Horror Haunted

(Edited by Stephen Jones)

James Herbert’s Dark Places

(Photographs by Paul Barkshire)