The Woman in Black (6 page)

Her room was illuminated only by candles. Eve had unpacked her meagre possessions from her suitcase, hanging what few clothes she had in the wardrobe. A diary, which she placed on the bedside table, and a couple of pieces of inexpensive, but sentimentally valued, jewellery completed her belongings.

She carefully took off the cherub necklace and
kissed it, placing it down on the bedside table beside the diary. She gave out a sad-sounding sigh as she looked at it. Her smile was the next thing to be removed. There was no one there she needed to smile for. She stared at herself in a small compact mirror.
I look tired
, she thought.
Tired.

She got into bed and found it to be almost as cold and damp as the rest of the house. She tried not to shiver, to relax, but her eyes wouldn’t close, sleep wouldn’t come. She lay on her back, staring at the ceiling. There was a patch of mould above her bed. It looked like an island. She tried to imagine what it would be like. Some distant place with palm trees and sandy beaches stretching as far as the eye could see. The kind of place she had seen only in Hollywood films. As she looked at the damp patch, part of her, the honest part, wished she was there, in the warm sun, not a care in the world. No war, no unhappiness. Somewhere she could relax. Where she could smile because she meant it.

However, sleep still eluded her, so she rolled over on to her side and stared at the window. She could hear the sea behind the blackout blinds, but knew it wasn’t lapping on her tropical shore. It was cold, harsh, splashing against the causeway. She imagined the eels in the water, slithering and sliding round each other, over each other, curling round the island itself.

Restless, she turned over on to her other side.

And found herself in a different room.

She looked round, eyes wide with shock. Her bed was now one of many, a whole row of them stretching away to a set of double doors. All the other beds were empty. It was a hospital ward. Empty of patients but full of shadows. She could hear faint screams echoing in the distance.

Her heart pounding, her mind reeling, trying desperately to take in what had just happened, she pushed back the covers, put her feet to the floor, got up. She walked past the other beds, searching for the source of the screaming. They were all empty but unmade, the outline of departed patients still visible in each of them.

Her bare feet made slapping echoes on the cold, tiled floor as she walked through the ward. The screaming increased as she reached the double doors. She pushed them open, approached the single doorway beyond. The screams were now agonisingly, painfully loud, almost unbearably so.

She put her hand to the door. Hesitated. No matter how much she wanted to look inside, fear of what she would see stopped her. She stretched out her hand once more. The same thing happened; her hand wouldn’t make the connection. She took a deep breath, another. And, pushing the fear away, opened the door.

Before her was a flurry of doctors and nurses, all surrounding a woman lying on a bed. She was the source of the screaming and there was blood everywhere. She was giving birth.

Eve leaned in, trying to see the woman’s face, but the medical staff were in the way. All she could make out was her hand clutching the metal side of the bed.

Then everything changed. The woman stopped screaming, started panting, as if she had just finished running a marathon. A nurse stepped away from the bed, carrying a bundle of blanket. Eve craned her neck to see as a tiny hand emerged from it, the miniature fingers grasping, flexing.

‘Let me see him … Please …’

It was the mother, calling from the bed. But the nurse paid her no heed. She kept the blanket-wrapped bundle close to her body as she turned and pushed past Eve and through the door.

‘Please,’ called the mother, ‘please, come back …’

The nurse didn’t even acknowledge her. She just kept walking, the door swinging behind her, creaking and cracking but refusing to close.

‘Please …’ The mother’s voice was becoming more desperate, catching in her throat as she called. ‘Don’t go, please, let me see …’

But there was no reply, just the door swinging backwards and forwards.

Creak … crack … Creak … crack …

Eve tried to ignore the noise and concentrate on the voice. There was something familiar about it. She moved in to get a closer look at the mother. And saw who was lying in the bed.

Herself.

Eve gasped and sat bolt upright, breathing raggedly. She was back in her bedroom in Eel Marsh House. Alone. She shook her head, trying to dislodge the images that she had carried over from sleep.
It was a dream, that’s all. Just a dream.

As her breathing returned to normal, she lay down once more, intending to go back to sleep, but something stopped her. A sound, rhythmic, pulsing.

It’s the door, she thought, in the hospital. Still swinging, still refusing to close. She looked at the bedroom door. It was closed. But the noise was still there.

Creak … crack … Creak … crack …

It must be the generator. Somehow it must have turned itself back on again. Even as she thought it,
she knew it wasn’t possible. She had turned it off herself. She listened again.

Creak … crack … Creak … crack …

Eve didn’t feel the slightest bit sleepy. The dream had seen to that. She got out of bed and opened the blackout curtains. Nothing but an empty beach and a calm sea.

She heard the noise again. It was coming from inside the house.

Someone else must have heard it. She couldn’t be the only one.

Creak … crack … Creak … crack …

Eve knew she couldn’t count on someone else hearing it and acting on it. There were children in the house, and they were her responsibility. She would have to investigate it for herself. She lit a candle and opened the door. After a couple of deep breaths, still feeling the dream’s adrenalin running round her system, she made her way into the hallway.

It was deserted. Eve crossed to Jean’s room, put her ear to the door and listened. Heard only light snoring. The other noise was still there, coming from downstairs.

The children. That was it: they were getting up to a bit of midnight exploring. She would go down, have a quiet word and be back in bed before Jean woke up. Her headmistress would be none the wiser.

Cupping a hand round the candle flame, she made her way downstairs. The flame cast huge shadows on the walls. The black mould seemed to suck the shadows in, making them even darker.

She stopped at the children’s quarters, crept into the room as quietly as she could. They were all there, sleeping.

And still she could hear the noise.
Why am I the only one who can hear it?
she thought.
Why hasn’t it woken anyone else?

Eve closed the door and made her way towards the kitchen. The sound was louder in there. She swung her candle round, trying to illuminate the dark corners. Saw nothing. No movement at all. She listened.

Creak … crack … Creak … crack …

The door at the other end of the kitchen was slightly ajar. Her heart hammering, Eve walked towards it.

It led to an old, narrow, stone staircase. Eve pushed it open and began to walk down, her candle flickering in the darkness. She was wary of falling, the stone slippery and damp under her feet, but she reached the bottom safely. Ahead of her was another door: old, rotting, almost black with mould. The sound was definitely coming from behind that.

Am I still dreaming?
she wondered.
Going through door
after door chasing a sound? To find
 … She shuddered, feeling the chill, the damp. No. This was no dream. This was real.

Eve cleared her throat. ‘Who’s there?’

No reply.

‘Is that … is that you, Dr Rhodes? Are you … do you need a bed for the night? Please … please tell me.’

Silence. There would be no going back now. Eve opened the door.

The smell hit her like a physical presence. The air was thick with a fetid, rank dampness. It permeated the foundations of the house with the stench of rot and decay. She clamped her hand over her mouth and nose, tried not to breathe it in. But she felt it, even in the short time she had been there, tainting her nightdress, sinking into the pores of her skin.

The room was huge. It probably covered the same area as the house, Eve guessed. The walls were stone, crumbling away and covered in moss. Water slowly trickled down them on to the wet floor, making the whole room glisten green and eerie in the candlelight.

There were rows and rows of shelves piled high with boxes, the lids pushed back, all crammed with old objects and artefacts, the damp and dusty remnants of the previous owners.

But Eve was alone.

Slowly taking her hand away from her face to cup the candle’s flame, she shone the light around once more, crossing to the shelves. The boxes were wet with mildew. She managed to get the lid off one and looked inside. There was a jumble of paperwork and shabby, moth-eaten clothes. She replaced the lid and looked at the next box along. It was full of old toys, soaked, blackened and neglected. The faces of ancient dolls, now with sightless eyes and frozen, vacant smiles, stared at her. Underneath them was a wooden frame. What was left of the material draped over and round it was rotted and black, but Eve could just make out echoes of colour on it, enough to recognise what it had been. A puppet show. Feeling a pang of sadness and regret, she replaced the box. Childhood’s end.

Next to the box of toys was something more interesting. An old phonograph. She reached out, touched the rusty machine. Was this what had been making the sound? She flicked the switch at its side, waited. Nothing happened. There were some cylinders next to it with writing on the side. She picked up the first one –
Alice Drablow
– and next to the name, some dates.

Then Eve saw something else. She frowned, brought the light in closer. It was beyond the shelf,
on the stone wall itself. She held the candle up to it. There were words scratched into the stone, distressed, strangely angular letters:
MY GRIEF WILL LIVE IN THESE WALLS FOR EVER.

Eve reached out, ran her fingers along the words. She wanted to get a feel for the letters, an impression of both them and who might have made them. But the stone was so damp and old that it crumbled at her touch. The words disappeared like they had been written in water, leaving Eve with a feeling of desolation and sadness, just like she had experienced in the nursery.

She stepped back, and knocked into something solid. She jumped, turned.

Creak … crack … Creak … crack …

An old rocking chair.

Was that what had been making the noise? Had someone been sitting in it? Rocking it? If that was the case, who was it and where were they now? As far as she could make out there was only one door, the one she had entered by. Did that mean whoever it had been was still down here with her?

Slowly, her heart hammering, she moved the candle round, trying to peer into the shadows.

A movement in the corner.

‘Hello?’

The noise came again. From behind the next shelf along.

‘Hello?’ she repeated, hoping her voice sounded more confident than she felt.

She held her breath as she walked towards the sound. She stretched out her arm holding the candle and, wanting to see what was there but scared to get too near, looked along the shelf.

A rat came scuttling towards her.

Eve screamed and dropped the candle. It went out with a hiss as it hit the wet floor, throwing the room into darkness. She stood stock-still, breathing heavily. She could still hear the rat scurrying about somewhere.

And then she heard it.

Creak … crack … Creak … crack …

The rocking chair was moving again.

Eve made for the door. Running up the stairs as fast as she could in the pitch-black, slipping and sliding as she went, into the kitchen, straight up the main staircase and back into bed. She pulled the covers right over her head and lay there tense and rigid, more afraid than she had ever been in her life.

All she could hear was the waves crashing against the shore outside.

And the frantic beating of her terrified heart.

Things looked better the next morning.

The sun, bright and distant, had burned away the mist, leaving the sky a cloudless robin’s-egg blue. Frost glittered and glistened everywhere. It was, thought Eve, the kind of morning you never experienced in a city.

She stood in the garden with Jean, watching the children. The garden might have seen better days and the barbed wire surrounding it was a constant reminder that the war was never really far away, but for the moment the children didn’t seem to care. The girls were skipping along to ‘Ring a Ring o’ Roses’ while Alfie and Fraser were chasing each other. Their laughter and happy energy chased away Eve’s fears from the previous night like the sun dispersing the mist.

‘Where’s Edward?’ asked Eve.

Jean kept her eyes on the children. ‘I told him he can’t come out until he’s willing to speak.’

Eve didn’t reply. She just turned, and made her way back to the house.

‘Leave him be,’ said Jean, her voice full of irritation.

Eve stopped. ‘I’m going to set up my classroom for the lesson.’

There was nothing in that statement for Jean to argue with, so she contented herself with a curt nod, and Eve went back into the house.

As she made her way towards the dining room, Tom came hurtling round a corner, straight into her side, almost knocking Eve off her feet. She was just recovering when James did the same thing. Both boys stopped dead, breathless and guilty.

She rearranged herself and looked down at them.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Tag, Miss,’ said Tom. ‘James was It.’

‘You shouldn’t be running around.’ She was about to say more when she noticed the doors to the children’s quarters were open. Edward was sitting on his bed, drawing. It looked like he was in another world, on a lonely little planet with only one inhabitant.