This House is Haunted (31 page)

“I’m sorry,” I said, stepping towards him, taking his hand in my own. I didn’t care what it looked or felt like; this man needed the touch of another human. “I’m so sorry, James.” I used his Christian name despite the difference in our rank; in that room at least, I felt that we were equals.

His groan sounded more defined now and I could tell that he was struggling with every fibre of his being to make himself understood. His head lifted slightly from the pillow and the sound emerged once again. I sank my head lower to his face, trying to hear.

“Kill me,”
he said with a great effort, the exertion leading him to bubble and foam at the lips as he gasped and struggled for air. I pulled back, shaking my head.

“I can’t,” I said, horrified by the prospect. “I can’t do it.”

A trickle of blood emerged from his mouth and made passage along his cheek and I stared, horrified, uncertain what to do as one hand lifted and, with great difficulty, he beckoned me forward.

“The only way,”
he gasped.
“Break the connection.”
And I understood at last. He had brought her to Gaudlin Hall. He had
married her, given her children here. And she had meant to kill him but somehow he had survived. He was as close to a corpse as it was possible to be but he continued to breathe. And she continued to exist in time with it. They could both live or they could both die.

I cried aloud, lifting my hands to heaven in desperation. Why had I been entrusted with this act? What had I done to deserve it? And yet, despite all my misgivings, I began to look around the room for something that might end the man’s suffering. If I was to be a murderess, then let it be quick and over. I told myself not to think about it. It was a monstrous act, a crime against God and nature itself, but I could not think or I would be persuaded differently. I had to act.

On a chair in the corner of the room, the chair that I imagined Mrs. Livermore sat in while she was nursing him, there lay a pillow. A pillow that was soft against her back and allowed her to rest quietly for a few minutes. It brought her comfort; so let it bring comfort to James Westerley too. I reached for it, picked it up and turned back to him, holding it tightly in both my hands.

His single good eye closed and I could see at that moment the sense of relief that was coursing through his body. It was finally about to end. He would be set free from this living death. I would be his killer and his salvation all at once. Standing beside him, I lifted the pillow, preparing to bring it down upon his face, but the moment my arms began to descend, the door to the room was flung open, ripped completely off its hinges, and a force unlike any I had ever felt before entered the room.

It was as if I was at the centre of a hurricane. Every dust mote, every item in the room that was not pinned to the floor
rose and circled me. Even Mr. Westerley’s bed lifted from the floor and rocked as a screaming like the banshee wail of a thousand lost souls filled the room. I stumbled backwards as the wall behind me gave way, the stones ripping from it and flying out into the night beyond, and within a few moments the room at the top of Gaudlin Hall was entirely exposed to the elements. I was staring down at the courtyard below, my feet teetering on the edge even as a hand reached out—oh that hand I knew so well, that same hand that had held my own throughout my childhood, the one that had walked me to and from school a thousand times—and pulled me back in, dragging me to the other side of the room where the second door, the one that Mrs. Livermore used to enter and leave Gaudlin Hall, stood and I pulled it open and threw myself down the stairs.

The steps seemed to go on for ever. I could scarcely believe there were so many of them but somehow I made my way round and round before emerging into the dark night outside the Hall. I was on the ground once again and scarcely able to believe that I yet lived. I ran towards Heckling’s stable but he was gone, of course; by now he would have already arrived at Mr. Raisin’s house, he would have delivered my letter and be on his way back here, his horse trotting along the road, grumbling to himself in irritation at my night-time messages. I flung the door open but then changed my mind. What was the point of entering, after all? Did I mean to hide? That would achieve nothing. I would not be safe there.

I turned back and ran towards the courtyard and was lifted off my feet, finding myself suspended in mid-air before being thrown bodily to the ground from a height of perhaps ten feet. I cried out, my body aching, but before I could pick
myself up, the presence collected me in her grasp, lifted me again and flung me down. This time my head crashed against the stone. I felt a wetness on my forehead and put a hand to it; it came away red in the moonlight. I could not survive much more of this. I looked up and was astonished to see the walls beginning to crumble on the third floor of the house. Part of the roof had collapsed, and to the left and right of the room in which I had stood stones were pouring down. I could see my own bedroom, the window ripped from its socket. I could make out Mr. Westerley’s bed near the edge of the precipice above as more and more of the stonework began to pull away from the building, each piece setting another one out of place, a domino effect that would in time, I realized, bring the whole edifice down.

The children
, I thought.

I was lifted again and prepared my body for its inevitable thrashing against the stones but this time, before I rose too high, I was released from her grasp and dropped without as much pain. I heard Santina scream and my father roar. Their argument took them away from me, back towards the house, and as I stumbled to my feet I heard the sound of horse’s hooves and a carriage approaching and turned to see Heckling and his horse making their way up the drive, the carriage occupied not by just one person as I had expected, but by four. For seated behind Heckling were Mr. Raisin himself and Madge and Alex Toxley.

“Help!” I cried, running towards them, ignoring the pain that seared through my body. “Help me, please!”

“My dear,” cried Madge, emerging first and rushing towards me, the expression on her face making clear how bloody and beaten my face was. If I had been an unattractive woman
before, it was, I imagined, as nothing compared to how I looked now. “Eliza!” she shouted. “Oh my God, what has happened to you?”

I stumbled towards her but fell into the embrace of Mr. Raisin, who had descended from his seat and ran towards me, his arms outstretched.

“Eliza,” he cried, pressing my head to his chest, and even in my pain and torment I felt a giddy delight to be held so. “My poor girl. Not again, not again,” he screamed suddenly and I realized that the terrible sight he was viewing reminded him of that awful night when he arrived at Gaudlin Hall to find the dead body of Miss Tomlin and the mutilated body of his friend, James Westerley.

“Look!” cried Madge, pointing towards the house, and we turned to see more stones slipping from the building, a side of the entire structure beginning to fall away even as the ground-floor windows were smashed by the weight of two spirits crashing against them, seeking supremacy. “The house,” she shouted. “It’s going to collapse.”

An unearthly sound emerged from my mouth as I realized that Isabella and Eustace were still inside. I wrenched myself free from Mr. Raisin’s grip and threw myself towards the front door even as he called after me, beseeching me to come back. My body ached, I dreaded to think of the damage that had been done to it, but I summoned every part of my own spirit to ascend those stairs to the first floor and ran down towards the children’s bedroom.

Isabella’s room was first but she was nowhere to be found so I ran to Eustace’s door, hoping to discover them both together. But no, he was alone, sitting up in bed, a terrified expression on his face, tears rolling down his cheeks.

“What’s happening?” he asked me. “Why won’t she leave?”

I had no answer for him. Instead I simply scooped him up in my arms, held him tightly to my body and made my way back down the staircase and out into the courtyard. Alex Toxley took him from my arms and laid him out on the grass to examine him as his wife, Heckling and Mr. Raisin stood staring up at the battle taking place above, two non-existent bodies struggling against each other, crashing into the walls of Gaudlin Hall, pulling the windows down, ripping the stones from the foundations as they sought supremacy.

“What is it?” cried Mr. Raisin. “What can it be?”

“I must go back,” I said to Madge. “Isabella is still in there somewhere.”

“She’s up there,” said Heckling, pointing northwards, and all our heads turned to the top of the house, just below the roof, where the entirety of Mr. Westerley’s bedroom was visible to us. I gasped. The stones were falling more quickly now; the room was starting to slide away. It would not be long before it fell. And there was Isabella, standing by her father’s bed, turning to look down at us for a moment before climbing on top of it and pressing her body close to his. It took only a moment more before the walls and floors gave way entirely and the left-hand side of the house collapsed in upon itself. Everything we could see there, Mr. Westerley’s room, my own exposed bedroom underneath, Mr. Westerley himself and Isabella, came down in a surge of stone, furniture and smoke, crashing to the ground beneath with such violence, with such a horrendous speed and implosion, that I knew immediately that he had been allowed to die at last, but that Isabella, who had been in my charge, whose care had been entrusted to me, was gone as well.

I had no more than an instant to consider this though for directly as the collapse occurred, a startling bright light, whiter than anything I had seen before, emerged from the walls in front of us and for a split second, a fraction less than it would take for an eye to blink, I saw my father and Santina Westerley locked together in mortal combat and then, just as quickly, her body blew apart, exploded into a million fragments of light that blinded us all and we turned away, gasping. When we looked back, all was silent. The house was half destroyed and the furies of the ground floor had disappeared entirely.

Santina Westerley was gone. I knew it. All fear had vanished. Her husband had been released from his suffering and she had been taken away too; where she had gone was a question that no man could answer.

I looked towards Heckling and Mr. Raisin, the Toxleys and my own dear Eustace, and they stared at me, each one speechless, uncertain what they could possibly say or how they could explain what had just occurred. And I felt the great pain of my body finally being realized, all the wounds and blood becoming real now, and I stepped a little away from there, back towards the lawn, where I sank to the ground and lay down, offering no words or tears, content to give my life to the next world.

But as I lay there, the voices of my friends muffled to my hearing and my eyes began to close, I felt a body wrap itself around me, those great strong arms that I had known my whole life and that I had spent this last month grieving. I felt them embrace me from behind and I was enveloped in the scent of cinnamon as my father’s head pressed itself against my own, his lips found my cheek, and he pressed them to it, keeping them there for a long time, his arms squeezing my body to tell
me that he loved me, that I was strong, that I would survive all this and more, and I relaxed into this most tender of embraces, knowing that I should never feel it again. Slowly, it began to grow less powerful, his arms began to loosen, his lips pulled away from my face, and the warmth of his body gave way to the chill of the night as he left me for ever and went at last to the comfort of that place from which no man may return.

Chapter Twenty-four

T
HE FUNERALS TOOK PLACE
three days later.

Eustace reverted to silence in the intervening time, staying as close to me as he could but never uttering a word. If I left a room he went to the door and waited there for my return, like a faithful puppy, and insisted on sleeping in my bed with me. At first, Mr. and Mrs. Raisin had offered to take him in, while the Toxleys offered me their spare room; I was grateful to accept the latter but Eustace made it clear that where I went, he would go too, and so we both took up residence in Madge Toxley’s house and she did all she could to keep the atmosphere light.

Unlike my eight-year-old charge, I did not feel any great sense of trauma regarding the events that had taken place. All of that had dissipated over those last few hours at Gaudlin Hall. Perhaps the adrenalin rush of fully defeating the ghost of Santina Westerley had given me courage that I never believed I possessed. I knew—I had known that night when her husband fell to his death and she disappeared alongside him—that she was gone for ever, that her spirit had been somehow intertwined with his. She had kept him alive for a reason, knowing that the law would see to it that she was put to death for what she had
done to Miss Tomlin. And so I did not fear her return and slept soundly, awoken only by the tossing of Eustace next to me, whose dreams, I feared, were not quite as peaceful as my own.

I tried to talk to him about Isabella but he simply shook his head and I felt it would be best not to press him on the subject. For my part, I wept for her the night after she died and I wept for her at her funeral, when she was laid in the earth in a white coffin in the same grave as both her parents, and I took some comfort in the notion that they were together again and would remain together for eternity. She had always appeared to be so in control of her feelings, such an introspective child, but it was my belief that she had suffered a great psychological trauma after her mother’s violent actions and death, which could never have been resolved. It was a tragedy, truly it was, but she was gone and Eustace was here and I had to focus my thoughts on him.

“There’s a rather good school,” Mr. Raisin said when he came to visit me in Madge Toxley’s front room the day after the funeral. He had brought a new puppy with him, a playful King Charles of about two months old, and Eustace had been persuaded to go outside with him and throw some sticks for the puppy to retrieve. I was keeping a careful eye on him through the window but he seemed to be in good spirits and enjoying the dog’s company; I even thought that I saw him smile and laugh for the first time since I had known him. “It’s near Ipswich. A boarding school called St. Christopher’s. You have heard of it, Miss Caine?”