The Vanishment (19 page)

Rachel sat in the front beside me, watching out for the chimneys of tin mines, which had started to appear above the fields. I had not told her that her parents were dead. I thought that perhaps I might never tell her. We could go on like this indefinitely, Rachel and I. We could travel the world together and never speak once of death.

I think she guessed where we were headed, though I did not tell her that either. When we set off, I just said we were going for a little holiday. I had no firm idea in my mind, other than that we had to get back to Petherick House. They were waiting for us. We had to go to them.

We passed through Tredannack quickly, almost furtively. The children were still in school, their mothers at home baking bread or watching television like Margaret Trebarvah. I understood Margaret and her fears now. Ted Bickleigh had been wrong. The police never would find the little body they sought.

The village had a lost, deserted air. No one was in the main street, not even a cat or dog. The cold marine air seemed to sit on the roofs and pavements with the weight of the sea itself.

The dark, familiar road. The sound of tires aching on the hard ground. Glimpses of sudden water shut in again by thin-branched trees and the hedges of my own disquiet. The dark-edged pale water that had swallowed Susannah Trevorrow, and my wife, and God knows how many others. If I caress you, I thought, will you give up your secrets? But how do you do that, how do you caress the sea?

The house was waiting for us, and behind it the sound of water crashing ashore. Rachel, who had been asleep, opened her eyes as we slowed and stopped at the gate. She turned as I drew up the hand brake and loosened my belt.

"We're here," she said.

"Yes, darling," I said. "Home again."

"I don't want to go. I'm frightened."

"What are you frightened of?"

"That something bad will happen, like before."

"Can you remember, Rachel?" I asked gently. "Can you remember what happened before?"

She did not speak at once. Something clouded her eyes. A shadow, something hinted at, that I could not find a name for.

Slowly she shook her little head from side to side.

"Something bad happened." The words were being dragged out of her, being dragged out of that other little girl who had died almost one hundred years ago. "I was called Catherine. I had a doll called Mr. Belkins and a kitten called Toby. Somebody hurt me. I was very cold. I was hungry."

"Who hurt you?" I asked. "Was it your aunt Agnes? Did she hurt you, darling?"

She shook her head. The questions were troubling her.

"I can't remember," she said. "I can't remember. Don't make me. I don't want to." She was on the verge of tears. I wondered what had made me bring her here.

"It's all right," I said, reaching for her. "Nobody's going to hurt you. Not this time."

She was hard to reassure.

"Will my mummy and daddy be coming here?" she asked.

"No," I said, holding my voice steady. "Not here. They're still in hospital. They have to stay a little longer."

She sank back into silence, into that little pool of loneliness only children know. How could I tell her that Tim and Susan could not come here because they were dead, that she would never see them again?

But then, on second thought, what did I know?

It felt like a real homecoming. Petherick House was mine again. For a moment I imagined living here for the rest of my life, writing book after brilliant book to the sound of the sea rattling. Getting out of the car, I shivered in the cold salt wind. Beyond, where the sea lay, thick clouds were piling up on the horizon.

We went inside. How still the house was. I switched on the light and headed straight for the meter beneath the stairs. Prudently, I had brought a bag of pound coins with me, and now I proceeded to stuff the meter with as many as would fit.

When I turned back to speak to Rachel, I saw her standing just inside the front door, staring up at the staircase. Her eyes were large and frightened. I could feel my heart begin to beat faster. Was it already starting? I joined her, taking her hand in mine.

'Can you see something?" I asked, following the direction of her gaze. The memory of my dreams came flooding back. But now I was here in the flesh, and the room of all my fears was there, unchanged, unchanging, at the top of the stairs. I only had to climb.

Rachel shook her head.

"No," she said. "Just the stairs. But I remember . . ." Her voice trailed away. I waited, but she did not go on.

"Are you hungry?" I asked. We had only eaten a snack on the way down, in a service station off the A30.

"Yes."

"Well, let's get our things out of the car, then we can cook something."

I put my bag in the room where I had slept before. Rachel wanted to sleep there with me. We found a small bed in another room and moved it to mine. When everything was settled, we went downstairs to the kitchen.

I remembered sitting there with Sarah on the night of our arrival, her nervousness, that moment when she told me she did not like Petherick House and that she wanted to leave. If I had listened to her, surely none of this would have happened. And yet I could not escape a terrible sense that everything that had taken place had been fated from the start. Sarah's resemblance to Susannah Trevorrow and Rachel's hazy memories of an earlier life as Susannah's child had not been coincidences. Something or someone had led me to Petherick House in the first place, and that same force had drawn me back again.

Thinking of Sarah made me jittery. The house had been quiet all through the second part of my stay in the summer, as though Sarah's vanishment had brought some sort of temporary peace to its walls. But now, with Rachel here, I knew it would not remain peaceful for long.

We had a late lunch of soup and canned spaghetti on toast, both more to Rachel's taste than mine. Rachel appeared thoughtful all through the meal. From time to time I would see her look up, as though she heard something, but when I asked her, she said no, there was nothing.

After lunch, we did a tour of the ground floor. The rooms were much larger than any Rachel had seen before, and she would go into each one admiringly, craning her neck to see the high ceilings. In the study, she stood very quiet for a while, then turned to me, pointing at the mantelpiece.

"There used to be funny lights there," she said. "Grandpa would set them on fire every night."

"Do you mean oil lamps?" I asked. There would not have been gas this far out in Catherine Trevorrow's time.

'I don't know. What are oil lamps like?"

"Well, did they have a tall glass piece on top, like a chimney?"

She frowned, then nodded.

"Yes. And shiny underneath. And there was a thing on the side you had to turn to make the light go up and down. I was never allowed to touch them."

Later, in the hall, she tugged my sleeve.

"What is it, Rachel?"

"Over there," she said. She was pointing at the wall opposite the staircase, just between the kitchen and the study.

"There used to be a little door there," she said.

"A door? But there's no room for it to go into."

She shook her head.

"It was a big cupboard. Things were kept in there. Brushes and things like that. I didn't like it. It was dark, and there were spiderwebs. Once, I got shut in by mistake, and cried and cried until I was let out."

Outside, it had started to grow dark. With the approach of night, the wind was rising. I could hear it in the trees. We went out in order to see the gardens before the light quite faded. Away from the house, Rachel reverted to an approximation of her former self. Here in the open air, it was as if a burden had been lifted from her small heart. I took her down to the cliff top, but she shrank back from it. The sound of the sea frightened her. This was the first time she had ever been to the coast. In this life.

Back inside, I let her watch television for a while. I had brought a portable set from London, knowing Rachel would be in need of distraction. It provided her with a world she could relate to. There were cartoons and songs and friendly faces. Nothing here could awaken memories of a past century. The television was an anchor chaining her to the present. I felt compelled to stay with her. I dared not let her out of my sight, not for a moment.

We went on watching television after the adult programs started. Rachel was initially intrigued, for the news and the soaps that followed it had until then been forbidden territory to her. But she grew quickly bored, and I suggested some games in the kitchen.

We played Ludo and Snakes and Ladders, and Rachel beat me every time, bursting into peals of laughter when she did so. But already she showed signs of growing tired. I was putting off bedtime. Now I was here, now it was night, now the wind outside had grown loud and sinister: the thought of climbing those too-familiar stairs and lying in that cold bedroom waiting for God knows what filled me with dread.

I made another meal, real pasta this time, with a passable Bolognese sauce. By the end, Rachel was growing genuinely tired. But I still hung back from going upstairs.

At nine o'clock she fell fast asleep in her chair. I could resist no longer. I switched off the lights, leaving on only those that lit the passage and the stairs. They would stay lit all night. Picking up Rachel, I held her across my shoulder and started up the stairs. God knows, I would not do that again. I was in a cold sweat by the time I reached the first landing. The noise of the storm beating in from the sea seemed to have brought the house to life. I thought that every bang and every rattle was a sign that it was beginning.

I had left the gas fire on in the room, and it was reasonably warm and dry. Rather than waken her, I let Rachel sleep in her clothes. I tucked her into bed, then slipped off my shirt and slipped into mine, leaving a low light lit on the bedside table. I kept my trousers on. Just in case. With the help of the lamp, I began to read.

Around midnight, I started to feel drowsy, though I was still reluctant to give way to sleep. I closed my book and sat upright, closing my eyes every so often, but without switching out the light. The meter had been well fed, there was no danger of the electricity being cut off. Unless the storm . . . I preferred not to think of that. But just in case, I had brought several flashlights with me.

Beside me, Rachel had started to murmur in her sleep. I looked across at her. Her arms were thrown out of the bedclothes, and her head was moving in small jerks from side to side. As I watched, the movements grew more violent. She was talking in her sleep, the words mumbled and incoherent. I decided to risk waking her. Pulling aside the bedclothes, I swung my legs out.

Suddenly Rachel screamed loudly and jerked herself upright. I thought she was about to go into convulsions. Racing across to her, I put my arms around her. She was wide-awake. Her breath was coming in short, rapid bursts.

"It's all right, love," I said. "It's all right, I'm here."

Her eyes were big with fear. What had she been dreaming of? She looked around the room frantically, then at me. I could smell the sudden fear.

"She's here," she said. "She's here in the house."

It was only then that I realized the storm had passed. It must have died down unnoticed while I was half dozing. All the loud bumps and scrapes had vanished with it. The house was as silent as it had ever been, and as full of shadows. I sat there, holding Rachel in my arms and listening.

"Do you know where she is?" I whispered. I did not say the name. I think we both understood whom Rachel had meant.

Rachel shook her head. For the first time she was really frightened.

"But you know she is in the house?"

She nodded. I did not ask how she knew.

"Where is Catherine's mother?" I asked. I had determined to keep the identity of Rachel and Catherine separate if I could. I needed to know what I was dealing with. And I sensed that this was where the greatest danger lay, in a blurring of identities.

"Not here," Rachel said. Again, I did not demand to know the source of her knowledge. But I did not for a moment doubt that she was right.

That was when I heard a sound like creaking on the stairs. As though someone was outside, moving slowly. I felt myself go rigid with fright. All my senses were strained. Had the sound been above or below the floor we were on? I listened hard. Suddenly a door slammed somewhere. Then all the doors in the house started to close, one after the other. She was going from room to room.
Bang.
Silence.
Bang. Bang.

The door of the bedroom started to open. Rachel and I were petrified. We did not know what was about to enter the room. The soft bedside light cast only a weak glow in the direction of the doorway. Slowly, the door swung open. A blast of cold air rushed into the room. I caught sight of something, but before I could see more closely, the door slammed shut again. Moments later another door down the corridor banged. She was still searching. But for what? Not for us. Now the banging moved to the top floor. We sat listening, shaking with cold. I held Rachel close and did my best to calm her. A last bang, then everything fell silent.

"Has she gone?" I asked.

Rachel shook her head.

A long silence followed. We did not move. I kept looking around the room, expecting to see something. But the shadows remained motionless.

All of a sudden the banging started again, but not slowly as before. Door after door banged in quick succession, ours among them. No sooner had the last door crashed shut than the sequence started again.
Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.
And again.
Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.
And again. It seemed as though it would go on all night.

But then, as suddenly as it had started, the banging stopped. The whole house seemed to be shaking from the violence of it. I could still hear the crashes in my head, like echoes ringing up and down the stairs. Rachel was clinging tightly to me. I could feel her tiny heart beating against my chest. My own heart was racing.

I bent down to Rachel.