The Body at Auercliff (31 page)

“This is what it was like before,” I whisper, remembering how I was trapped in the darkness as a child, and how the scratching sound seemed to fill the air. But the sound was always so loud and all-encompassing before, whereas now it seems so faint and weak.

I glance over my shoulder to check that the stone is still in place, keeping the door open, and then I shine the flashlight ahead as I make my way to the other end of the cold stone room. I don't see anything amiss, not even when I train the flashlight's beam on the nearby coffins, but finally I look down and see that there are a series of deep cracks running from the bottom of the wall, stretching through the concrete. In fact, in some places the concrete even looks to have broken entirely into a series of small, loose chunks.

And the scratching sound is coming from one of the cracks in the floor.

Crouching down, I start picking at the loose concrete, and sure enough several chunks quickly come away in my hands. Beneath, there are simply more pieces of cracked stone, some of which I'm able to jiggle out of the way. I keep working for a few minutes, before realizing that this is a hopeless task.

“There's nothing here,” I mutter out loud, getting to my feet and turning to head back to the door. “I don't -”

Suddenly the scratching bursts back into my head, with such force that I let out a cry of pain and drop to my knees. I manage to keep hold of the flashlight, but the pain is rippling through my thoughts and finally I turn and start crawling back to the crack. This time the pain doesn't fade, not even as I start pulling more little pieces of concrete away from the hole on the floor.

“What do you want?” I scream, but the pain is worse than ever before and I feel as if my skull is about to shatter.

With trembling hands, I pull on more chunks of concrete, but they seem firmly wedged in place. Still, I know I can't give up, not if I want to be free from the pain, so I keep tugging and tugging until finally another small piece comes away. With tears streaming down my face and the agony only increasing, I start using the base of the flashlight to hit the cracked concrete, breaking it into smaller chunks that I'm able to pull out.

Leaning closer to the hole, I feel a sudden sharp pain in one of my fingers, and I see that I've broken a nail clean off, leaving blood to trickle from the exposed quick. Still I keep going, digging with more and more urgency even though my dust-covered fingers are now covered in cuts. The pain is intense, but it's nothing compared to the pain that's building and building in my head, overpowering my every thought until I barely even remember who I am anymore. All I know is that I have to keep digging, to keep pulling tiny pieces of concrete out of the deepening hole, and a moment later I realize that hot blood is trickling from my left ear and running down the side of my face.

“Stop!” I gasp, barely able to get the word out at all. “Please -”

I pull on another piece of concrete, but this time I find that it's stuck fast. I try smashing it with the base of the flashlight, but even this doesn't work. The pain is getting worse in my head, and my fingertips are torn to ribbons, but I know I don't dare stop. My whole body is trembling and more tears are running down my face, but I pull as hard as I can manage on the chunk of concrete, hard enough that I feel my fingers are going to snap at any moment, hard enough to -

Suddenly the chunk comes away, and I fall back with a gasp. At the same time, the scratching sound stops dead.

I sit in complete silence for a moment, barely even noticing the blood that's dripping from my torn fingers. Staring at the hole in the concrete, I take a moment to get my breath and then slowly I crawl closer again, reaching down to pull away a few more loose chunks.

Suddenly a skeletal hand reaches up and grabs my wrist.

Epilogue

“
Another
body?” Scott replies the following morning, as we stand in the study with the remaining documents spread out across the desk. “So... This isn't the same one that you found in the bedroom the other day?”

Glancing out the window, I can see the yellow jackets of a forensics team working in the forest to pull the skeletal remains out from beneath the mausoleum's broken floor.

“Matilda Granger,” I whisper after a moment.

“Who?”

I turn to him, before looking down at the desk and starting to search through the documents. “I doubt they'll ever be able to prove it,” I tell him, “not more than a century and a half after she died, but I think the woman under the mausoleum was a former maid named Matilda Granger.” Finding the photograph that somehow escaped the bonfire, I hand it to him. “My uncle... I mean, my
father
, Martin Switherington, pieced together her history. He thinks she was murdered by Lady Catherine after having an affair with Sir Charles and falling pregnant.”

“And then they buried her out there in the forest?”

I nod.

“
Under
the mausoleum?” he adds.

“Close to it,” I reply. “Close enough that she could...”

I pause as I realize how crazy the whole thing sounds. At the same time, certain facts are undeniable. Martin's notes mention a scratching sound that seems to have plagued the Switherington family since the mid-nineteenth century, almost as if over the years we've been able to hear Matilda trying to claw her way up from her grave, dragging herself closer and closer to the family mausoleum. I can't help thinking that maybe she wanted to at least get her dead child in there, so that it could take its rightful place as part of the family.

Then again...

No, that's crazy. That can't have happened.

“And how exactly did you find her?” Scott asks.

“It's complicated,” I tell him, thinking back to the moment when the hand burst up from the hole and grabbed me. I remember falling back, and the hand began to crumble, and I've almost managed to convince myself that there was just some kind of built-up pressure that pushed the hand up.

And caused its fingers to wrap around my wrist.

“I think her remains should be interred in the mausoleum,” I continue. “And her unborn child's, too. It seems that's what she wanted. Assuming no-one else claims them, anyway.”

I wait for him to reply, but he's simply staring at the documents as if he doesn't quite understand.

“I wish I could piece more of it together,” I tell him, “but my... Well, Barbara destroyed all of Martin's notebooks, so a lot of it's going to remain a mystery forever. There is
one
other thing, though.”

Grabbing my phone, I bring up the family genealogy website I checked earlier.

“See this family tree?” I ask, tilting the screen so he can see it. “Notice anything?”

“That's your mother's side of the family,” he points out.

“On my father's side, through Martin,” I explain, “I'm a direct descendant of Sir Charles Switherington. And if you look here...” I zoom in on another part of the family tree, “on my mother's side, on Emily's side, I'm a direct descendant of a man named Tobias Granger, who just so happened to have been the brother of Matilda.”

Taking the phone from my hands, Scott stares at the screen for a moment.

“That's a pretty weird coincidence,” he mutters finally.

“It sure is.”

Looking down at the documents, I can't shake a sense of frustration that I might never get my family's entire history straightened out. Then again, I'm still struggling to get my head around the idea that these people were my direct descendants. Until yesterday, they were just an offshoot of the family, just the people from my aunt's crazy side. Now they're my parents and grandparents, and I wish I could know everything about them.

“Unless it's
not
a coincidence,” Scott says suddenly.

I turn to him. “How do you figure that?”

He pauses, before picking up the photo of Matilda Granger and turning it over, to look at Martin's handwritten note.

“So if I'm reading this right,” he says cautiously, “your uncle Martin... I mean, your
father
, claimed to have met Matilda in the 1950's, even though she was long dead by then.”

“Sure,” I reply, “but he was just... I don't know, he was confused.”

“What if he wasn't?”

I frown. “Come again?”

“Maybe she felt that her child was denied its rightful place in the family,” he continues, “and maybe she wanted to put that right.” He turns the photo over again, and we both look down at the photo of Matilda. “You said you saw a girl in the forest last night, and she told you -”

“That was just me losing my mind,” I reply, forcing a smile.

“You can't believe that for a second.”

“I do,” I continue, although I have to admit that I have certain doubts. “Auercliff is a spooky place. The human mind is easily tricked by the power of suggestion.”

“But you said the girl told you that she -”

“It was all in my head,” I add, tapping the side of my forehead to make the point further. “Let's not read too much into that. It was late, I was panicking and scared, I was -”

“And the scratching sound?”

I pause, and this time I'm honestly not quite sure what to say. The scratching sound apparently haunted the Switherington family on and off for generations, and I heard it myself. For a moment, it's tempting to believe that somehow we were all sensing Matilda's effort to dig through into the family mausoleum so that she could let her dead child rest where it belonged. There was a time when I'd have been all over a theory like that, but now it seems a little too real and too raw. If I believe that something like that is possible, then I have to believe that there really might be ghosts here at Auercliff.

And I'd rather not do that.

“You know what?” I say with a smile, setting the photo down, “maybe that's a step too far.”

Hearing a car pulling up outside, I make my way to the door.

“But -”

“I doubt we're ever going to learn the full truth,” I continue, “but I've got a feeling that no-one else in the family is going to hear that scratching sound again.” I pause for a moment, as I hear a car door being slammed shut, and I feel a shudder of regret in my chest. “It's just a shame that Auercliff is probably going to be lost from the family now. It's such a beautiful house, but I guess it deserves to be lived in properly again, by a family that really fills it up and brings it back to life. I hope so, anyway. There should be happy people here, not a family that's haunted by something awful that happened years ago.”

I stop for a moment, before turning back to him.

“Do you think pressure, or the force underground, could somehow suddenly get released and cause a hand to shoot up?” I ask.

“You mean -”

“And grab my wrist,” I add, “just for a second before letting go again. Is that possible?”

“I guess anything's
possible
,” he replies. “It seems kinda unlikely, though.”

“Yeah, well...” I pause. “Unlikely things happen. I guess it's best not to read too much into them.”

Heading out to the front door, I notice for the first time that the grandfather clock has started ticking again. Figuring that I can check that out later, I make my way to the open door, and I'm just in time to find a well-dressed woman reaching for the bell.

“Rebecca Wallace?” she asks, before looking down at the documents in her hands. “Or... Esmerelda Switherington?”

“It's complicated,” I reply. “I guess Esmerelda.”

“Nice name,” she says with a faint smile.

“A little old-fashioned,” I mutter. “I guess I'll get used to it.”

“If you're Emily Switherington's daughter,” she continues, holding the documents out to me, “then these are for you. My family's firm has been providing legal services for the people of Auercliff since... Well, since before I was born. In that envelope, you'll find some items that Emily had set aside, along with a copy of her last will and testament.”

“She wrote a will?” I ask, surprised by the news.

“She called my father a few years ago, and insisted that it had to be done immediately.”

“I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with these,” I reply, taking the documents. “This whole family is -”

“There's a note,” she adds. “Emily had my father prepare these items during one of her rare lucid moments, and the note...” She pauses. “I think you should read it. Everything will become clear.”

***

“She knew,” I whisper, as I finish reading the note. “She finally figured it all out one day. She forget again soon after, but she knew for just long enough to...”

Sitting on the steps at the front of the house, I take a moment to read the note one more time. It's hard to believe that my aunt had a lucid moment a couple of years ago, one that lasted long enough for her to change her will and write this note, but the evidence is right here in my hands. By the time the note was written, Rebecca would already have been dead in the other side of the house, and the note makes no mention of her. Perhaps Emily's mind merely gave her one final chance to realize the truth about what Barbara had done, and then she sank back into her dementia.

But she knew.

For at least a short period, she realized that I was her real daughter.

“Are you okay out here?” Scott asks as he wanders out to join me.

I turn to him. Realizing that I can't possibly explain, I hold the letter up for him to take, and I wait while he reads what Emily wrote.

“That must have been so hard for her,” he says finally. “To suddenly realize the truth, but to know that she'd forget it again at any moment.”

Holding back tears, I look across the lawn and watch as the forensics team finishes up at the mausoleum. They're loading equipment into their trucks, and I guess the bodies of Matilda and her unborn child are being taken somewhere for closer examination.

“She left you Auercliff?” Scott says suddenly.

I pause, before slowly nodding.

“The whole place? The house, the estate, everything? All this land?”

“I can't...” I take a deep breath, before getting to my feet. “It's crazy, I can't take this place on. It's not right.”

He steps around me and hands the letter back.

“It's your birthright,” he says after a moment.

I shake my head.

“Becky -”

“Auercliff needs someone who can restore it to its former glory,” I reply, interrupting him. “It needs someone who can make the house live again. It needs someone who can make it a happy place, instead of a place where a dead girl can rot unnoticed for five years. It needs someone who bring laughter and joy to its rooms, and who can put the ghosts aside and embrace the future.”

He pauses, before placing his hands on my shoulders.

“Or,” he says finally, “it needs someone who can
learn
to do all those things.”

I open my mouth to tell him he's crazy, but suddenly I notice something in the distance, beyond the tree-line. I pause, convinced that I must be wrong, but the forensics team has left now and I feel a shudder pass through my chest as I realize that I'm right.

“The door to the mausoleum,” I whisper. “They left it open.”

***

“There should be a proper path out here,” I point out as I lead Scott through the forest, toward the mausoleum up ahead. “There should be a little bit of a clearing, and some drainage ditches need to be dug all over the land. I think there might be lead in the soil, too, so that needs to be looked at. The whole place has been neglected for far too long.”

“Already making plans?” he asks.

Stopping in front of the mausoleum, I stare for a moment at the open door. I can see the shelves inside, with the coffins still in their original places, and I can just about make out the spot on the floor where I tore away all that concrete last night.

“Emily would have wanted to rest in there,” I say finally, “and Matilda belongs there too, with her child.” I pause. “But after that, I think maybe it's time for a new chapter.”

“Apparently there's no doctor in the village,” Scott replies. “The previous guy retired decades ago, and now the nearest doctor is some bloke about ten miles away. If you ask me, the locals would be pretty happy if a doctor moved to the area and opened a surgery.”

Reaching into my pocket, I take out the set of keys I found last night. Searching through them, I quickly find a large, dark key that looks as if it might fit the mausoleum's door.

I step forward and take one final look inside, before sliding the key into the lock. After swinging the door shut, I turn the key and then pull it out, before double-checking that the door is properly secured. Sure enough, it's locked, and at least this time I'm on the right side.