The Woman in Black (20 page)

It was the first time he had acknowledged how he felt about what had happened and his failure to save his crew. Out loud. To himself. He felt a calmness wash over him. Strength ran through his body. He was properly alone. For the first time in a long time, he had no one with him.

He put his head down, concentrated once more on the road ahead, the rain beyond.

The water stank, tasted of stagnation and corruption, like rancid dead fish and more besides. It filled Eve’s nostrils and mouth, making her cough and gag. She couldn’t spit it out quick enough. She put her feet on the ground.

She and Edward were in the cellar. The wooden shelves had splintered and smashed, as the floor had given way, and they had fallen into them, the boxes upended, the contents now floating all about. The water was high, impossibly so, Eve thought. Much higher than it had been before, at waist height. Overhead pipes had burst, spraying their brackish contents all over her. The water gushed through the airbricks. The walls were crumbling, the resistance in the stone weakening as the water from outside
poured in, getting faster, threatening to tear out the house’s foundations.

The fizzing, faltering light bulbs cast weak, intermittent illumination.

Eve hurt all over, but she didn’t have time to check herself. She had to find Edward. She saw him, standing at the top of the steps, the doll clutched to his chest.

Standing next to him was Jennet Humfrye. Their pose was exactly like that of Edward’s drawing, and the photograph, the walls blackening and crumbling all around them.

‘Edward,’ she shouted above the noise of the water, ‘Edward … are you all right?’

He didn’t reply.

She made to move towards him but found that her legs were held fast. She looked down. Silver grey coils moved about her ankles, weighing her down, stopping her moving. Nipping and biting at her legs. Living, writhing chains.

Eels.

Eve swallowed back the urge to scream.

‘Edward …’

The boy just stared down at her.

‘Edward, you have to help me …’

Edward kept staring. Eve saw his expression. Like he was in a trance. Jennet inclined her head.
He looked up at her, his head on one side as if listening, receiving instructions. Then he nodded.

‘Edward, no …’

Edward began to walk down the steps. Slowly, ignoring the rapidly rising water.

‘No,’ shouted Eve, trying desperately to pull her legs free. ‘No … you can’t have him … No …’

Edward clutched Mr Punch tightly to his chest as he descended into the water. He walked into the centre of the cellar, out of Eve’s reach. Stopped moving. Eve realised what he was going to do, what Jennet was willing him to do. Drown himself.

The water level kept rising. It bobbed and splashed, covering Edward’s mouth. He made no attempt to walk or swim away, just stared straight ahead.

‘Wake up … Edward, please, wake up …’

Eve struggled to free herself from the coils of eels, but they just gripped her legs tighter. She opened her mouth as wide as she could, found a voice as loud as she could manage.

‘He’s not yours …’ she shouted at the figure at the top of the stairs.

Her only answer was a loud rumbling and cracking as the whole house started to shake, decay spreading everywhere.

‘Leave him alone …’

Eve looked over at Edward once more. The water was almost covering his nose now. His eyes were still open. Eve thought she saw the struggle going on inside him, behind those eyes. She didn’t know if it was just her imagination, the flickering illumination making her see things that weren’t there, but she had to believe it, had to cling on to it. He was in there. And he was fighting to get out.

‘Edward,’ she shouted, ‘you have to fight her, you have to … don’t give in to her …’

The water covered Edward’s nose. He stopped trying to breathe.

‘Edward …’ Eve thought frantically. ‘You … you fight bad dreams with good thoughts … Remember?’ No response. Edward closed his eyes. Eve’s voice became even louder. ‘Edward, you fight bad dreams with good thoughts. Your mother told you that. Remember? Your mother …’

Edward opened his eyes and looked to the top of the steps. Jennet was gone. In her place stood Edward’s mother, resplendent in her good black coat, standing just as he had last seen her, in the doorway of their house, calling to him, reaching out to him, a shimmering, impossible image.

The wall cracked around her, just as it had done in the explosion. And she was gone.

In her place was Jennet.

Edward closed his eyes once more and put his head under water.

‘No … No …’ Eve’s voice was a small, defeated thing. She had no fight left in her. She had failed.

Edward was gone. Jennet was triumphant.

Eve stared at where Edward’s head had disappeared. There was nothing to mark his passing, not even any air bubbles. She just had to accept that he had drowned. She felt that pain like a knife in her heart.

Then, as she watched, the water began to roil and bubble and Edward appeared once more. He threw his head back, gasping for air. His arms came up and he flung the Mr Punch doll as hard as he could towards the steps.

A terrifying scream echoed round the room.

A thrill of hope ran through Eve. ‘You’ve lost,’ she shouted to the walls. ‘He’s rejected you …’

Huge splits sundered the walls, like lightning bolts running up and over the ceiling. Jennet’s rage was tearing the house apart.

The eels loosened their grip on Eve’s legs, and she managed to pull herself free of them. The water was up to her neck now, and she struggled to half-swim, half-walk towards where Edward was treading water. The boy held out his hands, his face showing relief and happiness at seeing her. Eve felt something within her break.

She reached him.

‘You’re safe now … I’ve got you …’

As she spoke, hands appeared from beneath the water. Small, grey, emaciated. Children’s hands, but grasping and clawed. They grabbed Edward, began to pull him down.

‘No …’

Eve tried to pull the boy back towards her, make their way to the few stairs that were still above water, but more hands appeared, tugging and clutching. They were on her, too, grabbing her clothes, her limbs, pulling her down with him.

‘Let us go …’

There were too many to fight. The hands pulled them both under the water.

Once she had been dragged under, Eve opened her eyes.

Through the murky water, she could see that the cellar floor had given way, the walls were following. The outside was coming inside. All around her and Edward were small, writhing shapes.
Jennet’s victims. The ghost choir. Still marked by the manners of their deaths, their burns, mutilations and poisonings. No longer human, now just ravaged wraiths. Dead fish eyes and sleek fish skin, jaws distending, displaying mouths of pointed, sharp teeth, hands fin-sharp and claw-like.

Grabbing at Eve and Edward, pulling them down to the sudden depths.

Eve, air rapidly running out, fought them as hard as she could, forcing the fingers off her body, pulling away from their sickening embrace. Edward was doing the same, frantically scrabbling to be free.

Eve looked upwards, saw Jennet standing above the water, returned to the steps of the cellar, malignantly exultant. Eve renewed her efforts to escape, but the hands were too strong, too many. Digging into her clothes, her flesh. Pulling her relentlessly down.

Edward stopped struggling, clung hard to her. Eve, sensing the futility of fighting further, accepted what was to happen and hugged him tightly. She could feel his little body trembling.

They would be together for the last few seconds of life and then slip away.

Eve closed her eyes.

Harry parked the bus, the wind and rain soaking him almost instantly, and ran straight into the house. It was crumbling, falling down around him. He looked round the hallway, saw the hole in the floor, the water rising right up to it. The house was rotting from the inside out.

‘Eve …’

No reply. He looked again at the hole in the floor. The water was almost up to the ceiling. Then he heard screams coming from down there. A woman’s voice. Eve.

He pulled off his greatcoat, ready to jump straight in. But something stopped him. The hole was small; there were too many unknown factors. Instead he ran through to the kitchen, pulled open the door to the cellar.

There stood Jennet.

She turned her baleful, malevolent eyes on him. Moved towards him.

‘Don’t,’ he said.

She stopped.

‘I’m not scared of you,’ he said, feeling calmer and more confident than he had for a long while. ‘You’ve got no power over me any more.’

She stared at him.

‘You could have done more for Nathaniel. It’s not just your own rage at what was done to you. It’s your guilt that you didn’t do enough for him.’

Something flickered behind Jennet’s obsidian eyes.

‘Now move.’ He jabbed his finger at her.

She flinched and moved aside.

The steps were nearly submerged by the rising water. He saw the faint outline of two figures being dragged away from the surface, down into the depths, and dived straight in.

Eve looked up and saw him. His presence re-energised her and she began to pull at the claws with renewed vigour.

Harry swam towards them, grabbing hold of Edward. The boy resisted at first, thinking it was another of Jennet’s attacks, but with Eve’s encouragement allowed Harry to take him away.

As Harry grasped Edward, the ghost choir loosed their grip, cowering away from him in fear.
Harry took Eve’s hand and pulled her up with him. Her heart was pounding, adrenalin and hope hammering round her body as the three of them moved up to the surface.

Then a hand reached out, grabbed Eve’s necklace, pulling her whole body backwards once more, dragging her down again.

She let go of Harry, put her hand to her throat, wrenching away from the grasp, trying not to choke. As she did so, more hands appeared, clutching at her.

The necklace snapped. The cherub pendant sank slowly down and away.

Eve made to dive down after it, but Harry grabbed her, pulled her back to the surface.

Let it go
, she thought.
Keep moving forward.

They broke the surface at the same time, gasping for air.

‘Come on,’ shouted Harry, swimming over towards the stairs.

With a groan, the ceiling above the stairs collapsed, blocking their escape.

‘Jennet …’ managed Eve, flinching from falling masonry. She looked around. ‘This way …’

Eve began swimming towards the other end of the cellar, to the hole she and Edward had fallen through. Harry followed, Edward on his back. The water had almost reached the cellar ceiling as Harry lifted Edward up and helped him to
scramble through the opening above them. Once the boy was out of the way, he turned to Eve.

‘Your turn,’ he said, helping her up.

Eve pulled herself up on to the hallway floor, free of the water, still gasping for air. Around her, the house was quivering and shaking. Timber and stone debris were littered about the place, and she had to jump out of the way as another roof beam came down near her.

‘Quickly,’ she said, stretching out her hand to help Harry out of the water.

He clutched her hand, began to pull himself up. His eyes caught hers. He smiled. She returned it.

Then he caught sight of something else behind her, and his expression changed.

Jennet was standing in the corner of the hallway, staring at them. She looked up at the ceiling, screamed with rage.

Harry realised what was about to happen, what she was doing. He got to his feet and, instinctively, grabbed hold of Edward and Eve and pushed them out of the way towards the front door.

Eve, thrown off balance, landed on the floor. She looked up. Saw the ceiling above Harry collapse on top of him.

‘Harry!’

She watched his body slacken and crumple as
the weight of the wood and stone knocked him unconscious, breaking his bones, crushing him. The floorboards beneath him splintered from the force, and Harry’s now lifeless body was taken into the rising water which surged and splashed all over the hallway.

Jennet kept screaming. The walls shook and crumbled; the rest of the ceiling was about to give way. One last attempt by Jennet to claim Edward.

Eve pushed the boy through the door and followed him out.

The screams intensified. The glass of the windows shattered, Jennet’s rage reflected in every shard.

Eve and Edward ran stumbling from the house, not daring to stop, to look back. They skidded and rolled down the driveway, coming to a stop past the gates before the causeway. Eve turned, looked back at the house.

All that remained was a blackened, rotted shell surrounded by rubble. Jagged walls, twisted beams and, oozing from the centre, a deep pool of black water spilled out like an oil slick.

The screams had echoed away to nothing.

Silence.

‘Harry …’

Eve knew he was gone, but she couldn’t bring herself to admit it. Tears streamed down her face. She screamed and sobbed his name.

‘Harry …’

She sat unmoving, staring at the carcass of the house.

Then a small hand slowly took her own. Squeezed. She looked down. Edward.

‘I’m sorry …’

The first words he had spoken.

Eve put her arms round him. Held him as tightly as she could. His tears joined hers.

The rain stopped. Dawn began to break.

A cold, distant sun broke through the mist and shone down on them.

The Blitz was over and London, or most of it, was still standing.

The roads were strewn with rubble. Nearly every street was marred by ruined buildings, like the remains of an ancient civilisation waiting for the new, modern one to emerge from it. The past was over. The future still to be written.

The heavy pall of fear had lifted from the city. Now Londoners went about their daily lives without the fear of imminent death. The commonplace terror of going to sleep and dreading not waking was gone. The panic of Nazi invasion had abated. For now. The war still rumbled on, but it was, for the most part, a distant thing. People were pulling together, making an effort.
For the first time in a long while, they dared to hope.