فصل بیستم

Jack was standing in the middle of the attic, staring openmouthed at his surroundings. He had switched off his phone, and there was light coming from somewhere, a thin, gray light that I couldn’t immediately locate. There must be a window somewhere, but that wasn’t what I was looking at. What I was looking at were the walls, the furniture, the feathers.

They were everywhere.

Strewn across the broken rocking chair in the corner, in the dusty, cobwebbed crib, over the rickety doll’s house and the dusty chalkboard, across the pile of smashed china dolls piled up against the wall. Feathers, feathers, and not down from a burst pillow either. These were thick and black—flight feathers from a crow, or a raven I thought. And there was a stench of death too.

But that wasn’t all of it. It wasn’t even the worst of it.

The strangest thing was the walls—or rather, what was written on them.

Scribbled on all of them, in childish crayon letters, some small, some huge and scrawled, were words. It took me a minute or two to make them out, for the letters were misshapen and the words badly spelled. But the one right in front of me, the one staring me in the face over the small fireplace in the center of the room, was unmistakable. WE HATE YOU.

It was exactly the same as the phrase Maddie had spelled out in her Alphabetti Spaghetti, and seeing it here, in a locked, boarded-up room she could not possibly have entered, gave me a jolt to the stomach as if I had been punched. It was with a kind of sick dread that I held up my phone torch to some of the other phrases.

The goasts donet like you.

They hate yu.

We want you too go awa.

The gosts are angrie.

They haite you.

Get out.

There angry

Wee hate you.

We hite u.

GO AWAY.

We hate you.

Again and again, small and large, from tiny letters etched with concentrated hate in a corner by the door, to the giant sprawling scrawl above the fireplace that I had seen when I first entered.

We hate you. The words had been bad enough, sliding in slimy orange juice across a plate. But here, scrawled in a demented hand across every inch of plaster, they were nothing short of malevolent. And in my head I heard Maddie’s little sobbing voice again, as though she had gasped the words in my ear—the ghosts wouldn’t like it.

It was too close to be coincidence. But at the same time, it was totally impossible. This room was not just locked, it was boarded up, and the only entrance was through my own bedroom. And without question, someone else had been up here, and it had not been Maddie. I had heard those relentless, pacing footsteps just moments after staring down at Maddie’s sleeping form.

Maddie had not written those words. But she had repeated them to me. Which meant . . . was she repeating what someone had whispered to her . . . ?

“Rowan.” The voice seemed to be coming from a great distance, hard to hear beneath a shrill buzzing coming from inside my own skull. Through the ringing I felt a hand on my arm. “Rowan. Rowan, are you okay? You look a bit strange.” “I’m—I’m okay—” I managed, though my voice was strange in my ears. “I’m all right. It’s just—oh God, who wrote that?” “Kids messing about, don’t you think? And, well, there’s your explanation for the noise.” He nudged with his foot at something in the corner, and I looked to see a pile of moldering feathers and bones, held together by little more than dust.

“Poor wee bastard must have got in through that window and couldn’t get out, battered himself half to death trying to escape.” He pointed to the opposite wall, to a minute window, only a little bigger than a sheet of paper. It was gray with dirt, and partway open. Letting go of my arm, Jack strode over and slammed it shut.

“Oh—oh my God,” I found I couldn’t catch my breath. The ringing in my ears intensified. Was I having some kind of panic attack? I groped for something to hold on to, and my fingers crunched against dead insects, and I let out a strangled sob.

“Look,” Jack said practically, seeming to make up his mind, “let’s get out of here, get you a drink. I’ll come back in a bit, clear up the bird.” Taking my hand, he led me firmly towards the stairs. The feel of his large, warm hand in mine was unspeakably reassuring, and for a moment I let myself be pulled towards the door and the stairs, back towards the main house. But then something inside me rebelled. Whatever the truth of this attic, Jack was not my white knight. And I was not some terrified child who needed protecting from the reality of what lay behind this locked door.

As Jack turned sideways to edge between a pile of teetering chairs and a dried-up paint box, I took the opportunity to pull my hand out of his.

Part of me felt I was being ungrateful. He was only trying to be reassuring, after all. But the other part of me knew that if I fell into this role, I might never escape it, and I could not allow Jack to see me that way—as yet another hysterical, superstitious woman, hyperventilating over a pile of feathers and some childish scribbles.

And so, as Jack disappeared down the stairs towards the floor below, I made myself stop and turn, taking a last, long look back at that dust-shrouded room, filled with smashed dolls and toys, broken furniture and the spoiled debris of a lost childhood.

“Rowan?” Jack’s voice came from down the stairs, hollow and echoing up the narrow corridor. “Are you coming?” “Yes!” I said. My voice was cracked and I coughed, feeling my chest tighten. “I’m coming!” I moved quickly to follow him, filled with a sudden dread of the door shutting, being trapped up here with the dust and the dolls and the stench of death. But my foot must have caught on something, for as I reached the top of the stairs, there was a sudden rushing clatter and the pile of dolls shifted and collapsed in on itself, china limbs cracking against one another with ominous chinks, dust rising up from threadbare moth-eaten dresses.

“Shit,” I said, and watched, horrified, as the little avalanche subsided.

At last all was quiet, except for one single decapitated china head rolling slowly towards the center of the room. It was the way the warped floorboards bowed, I knew, but for a crazy second I had the illusion that it was pursuing me and would chase me down the stairs, its cherubic smile and empty eyes hunting me down.

It was just that, though, an illusion, and a few seconds later it came to a rocking halt, facing the door.

One eye had been punched out, and there was a crack across one pink cheek that gave its smile a curiously mocking appearance.

We hate you, I heard, in the corner of my mind, as if someone had whispered it in my ear.

And then I heard Jack’s voice again, calling me from the bottom of the stairs, and I turned and followed him down the wooden steps.

Stepping out into the warmth and light of the rest of the house felt like returning from another world—after a trip into a particularly dark and nightmarish Narnia perhaps. Jack stood aside to let me out, and then shut the door behind us both and locked it. The key screeched in protest as he did so, then we both turned and made our way down to the bright, homely comfort of the kitchen.

I found my hands were shaking as I tried to rinse out the teacups and put the kettle on to boil, and at last, after a few minutes of watching me, Jack stood up and walked over to me.

“Sit down and let me make you a cup for a change. Or would you prefer something a wee bit stronger? A dram, maybe?” “Whiskey, you mean?” I said, slightly startled, and he grinned and nodded. I gave a shaky laugh. “Bloody hell, Jack. It’s barely lunch.” “All right then, just tea. But you sit there while I make it. You’re always running around after those kids. Have a sit down for a change.” But I shook my head, stubborn. I would not be that woman. I would not be one of those other four nannies . . .

“No, I’ll make the tea. But it would be great if you could—” I paused, trying to think of a job he could do, to soften the refusal of help. “If you could find some biscuits.” I remembered myself giving Maddie and Ellie jammie dodgers after the shock of the speakers going off in the middle of the night. Sugar is good for shock, I heard my own voice saying, as if I were a frightened child, able to be jollied back to cheerfulness with a forbidden treat.

I’m not normally like this, I wanted to say, and it was true. I wasn’t superstitious, I wasn’t nervy, I wasn’t the kind of person who saw signs and portents around every corner and crossed themselves when they saw a black cat on Friday the thirteenth. That wasn’t me.

But for three nights now I’d had little or no sleep, and no matter what I tried to tell myself I had heard those noises, loud and clear, and they were not a bird, whatever Jack thought. The senseless, panicked crashing of a trapped bird—that would have been scary enough, but it was nothing like the slow, measured creak . . . creak . . . that had kept me awake, night after night. And besides, that bird was dead—long dead. There was no way it could have been making noises last night, or any night for a while. In fact judging by the smell and the state of decomposition, it had probably been up there for several weeks.

The smell . . .

It had stayed with me, fusty and choking in my nostrils, and as I carried the tea across to the sofa, I found I could still smell it, even though I’d washed my hands. It clung to my clothes, and my hair, and glancing down I saw a long streak of gray on the sleeve of my jumper.

The sun had gone in, and in spite of the underfloor heating, the room was not particularly warm, but I shrugged the sweatshirt off and put it aside. I felt that I’d have frozen rather than put it back on.

“Here you go.” Jack sat beside me, making the springs of the sofa squeak, and handed me a rich tea biscuit. I dipped it automatically into my tea, then took a bite, and shivered, I couldn’t help myself. “Are you cold?” “A bit. Not really. I mean, I have a jumper, it’s just I didn’t—

I couldn’t—”

I swallowed, then, feeling like a fool, I nodded at the streak of attic dust I’d noticed on the sleeve.

“I can’t get the smell of that place out of my head. I thought maybe it was in my sweater.” “I understand,” he said quietly, and then, as if reading my thoughts, he stripped off his own jacket, streaked with cobwebs, and laid it aside. He was only wearing a T-shirt underneath, but in contrast to my chill, his arms were warm, so warm that I could feel the heat from his skin as we sat, not quite touching, but uncomfortably close on the small two-seater sofa.

“You’ve goose pimples all up your arms,” he said, and then, slowly, as if giving me time to move away, he put out a hand and rubbed the skin of my upper arm gently. I shivered again, but it was not with cold, and for a long moment I had an almost overwhelming urge to close my eyes and lean into him.

“Jack,” I said, at the same time as he cleared his throat, and the baby monitor on the counter let out a crackling wail.

Petra.

“I’d better go and get her.” I stood, setting the tea down on the counter, and then staggered as a sudden wash of dizziness came over me, from standing up too fast.

“Hey.” Jack stood too, putting a hand on my arm, steadying me. “Hey, are you all right?” “I’m fine.” It was true, the moment of faintness had passed. “It’s nothing. I get low blood pressure sometimes. And I’m just—I didn’t sleep well last night.” Ugh. I had already told him that. He was going to think I was coming apart, adding amnesia to my list of frailties. I was better than this. Stronger than this. I had to be.

I badly wanted a cigarette, but the CV I had handed in to Sandra had said “nonsmoker” and I couldn’t risk unpicking that particular thread. I might discover everything unraveled.

I found myself glancing up, towards the ever-watching egg-shaped eye in the corner of the room.

“Jack, what are we going to tell Sandra?” I asked, and then the baby monitor crackled into life again, this time a more determined cry that I could hear both through the speaker, and coming down the stairs. “Hold that thought,” I said, and sprinted hastily for the stairs.

Ten minutes later I was back down with a freshly changed Petra, who was grumpy and blinking, and looking as tousled and confused as I felt. She glowered at Jack as I came back into the kitchen, her little hands gripping my top like a small marsupial, but when he chucked her under the chin she gave a little, reluctant smile, and then a proper one as he pulled a funny expression, laughing and then twisting her face away in that funny way children do when they know they’re being charmed into good spirits in spite of themselves.

She let herself be settled in her high chair with some segments of satsuma, and then I turned back to Jack.

“I was just saying—Sandra and Bill. We have to tell them about the attic—right? Or do you think they know?” “I’m not sure,” Jack said thoughtfully. He rubbed his chin, his fingers rasping over dark auburn stubble. “They’re sort of perfectionists, the way that cupboard was boarded up inside didn’t look like their work. And I can’t imagine they’d leave all that crap up there. Sorry, excuse my French, Petra,” he said formally, giving her a little mock bow. “All that rubbish, is what I meant to say. They cleared the house when they moved in from what I understand—I didn’t start work until a couple of years after they bought it, so I didn’t see the renovations, but Bill’ll bore the hind leg off a donkey if you give him an excuse to talk about the work. I can’t imagine them just ignoring something like that. No, my best bet is that they’d never opened the cupboard and didn’t know the attic was there. The key was pretty stiff, you’d be forgiven for thinking you had the wrong one. It’s only because I’m a stubborn bastard I forced it.” “But . . . the poison garden,” I said slowly. “They did just ignore that, right?”

“The poison garden?” He looked at me, startled. “How do you know about that?”

“The girls took me in,” I said shortly. “I didn’t know what it was at the time. But my point is they’ve done the same thing there, haven’t they? Shut the door, forgotten about it?” “Well,” Jack said slowly, “I . . . well, I think that’s a bit different. They’ve never been as hands-on in the grounds. There’s nothing up there to harm anyone, though.” “What about the writing?”

“Aye, that’s a bit weird, I’ll give you that.” He took a long gulp of tea and frowned. “It looked like a child, didn’t you think? But according to Jean, there’d been no kids in the house for more than forty years, when the Elincourts moved in.” “It did look like a child.” My thoughts flickered to Maddie, then Elspeth, and then to the heavy manlike tread I’d heard, night after night. That had not been the step of a child. “Or . . . like someone pretending to be a child,” I added slowly, and he nodded.

“Could be vandals, I suppose, trying to creep people out. It’s true the house was empty for a long time. But then . . . no, that doesn’t make sense. Vandals would hardly have boarded up behind themselves. It must have been the previous owners who did that.” “Dr. Grant . . .” I paused, trying to think how to phrase the question that had been hovering at the edge of my mind ever since I had read the newspaper article. “Did you . . . I mean, are you . . . ?” “Related?” Jack said. He gave a laugh, and shook his head. “God, no. Grants are ten a penny up here. I mean, I suppose we’d have all been part of the same clan back in the day, but there’s no connection between our families nowadays. I’d never even heard of the man until I began working here. Poor bastard killed his daughter, isn’t that the story?” “I don’t know.” I looked down at Petra, at the soft vulnerable curve of her skull beneath the thistle-down hair. “I don’t know what happened to her. She ate poison berries according to the inquest.” “I heard he fed her some experiment from his dabblings. That’s what the folk in Carn Bridge’ll tell you if you ask.” “Jesus.” I shook my head, though whether in denial or disgust, I wasn’t sure. There was something inexpressibly upsetting about hearing the suggestion in Jack’s cheerful, matter-of-fact voice, and I wasn’t sure what bothered me most—the idea that Dr. Grant might have killed his own child and got away with it, or the fact that local gossip had apparently tried and condemned him as a murderer in the absence of any concrete proof.

It seemed impossible though that anyone would poison their own child, and it hardly fitted with the wild, grief-stricken face I’d seen on the web. He looked like a man destroyed by his own pain and despair, and all of a sudden, I felt a fierce urge to defend him.

“The article I read said that Elspeth accidentally picked cherry laurel berries thinking they were elderberries or something, and the cook made them into jam, not realizing what they were. I can’t see how that could be anything more than an accident.” “Well, the folks round here would have you believe that he was—” He stopped, looking at Petra, and seemed to think better of whatever he had been about to say, even though she was too little to understand any of it. I knew how he felt. There was something obscene about discussing such horrible things in front of her. “Well, never mind. Not a pretty story, either way.” He drained his cup and put it neatly in the dishwasher, and then gave a little wry smile, very different from the warmth of his usual broad, expansive grin. “There’s a reason the house was empty for a decade before Sandra and Bill brought it. There’s not many from round here would have lived at Struan, even if they had the money to renovate it.” Struan. The name from the article gave me a little prickle, a reminder that whatever Sandra and Bill had done to erase it, this house had a past, and that people in Carn Bridge remembered it. But Jack was continuing on, untroubled.

“What d’you want me to do about it, then?”

“Me?” I asked, startled. “Why do I need to decide?”

“Well, it’s your bedroom it opens onto. I’m not a superstitious man, but I wouldn’t fancy sleeping next to that lot myself.” I shuddered, unable to help myself.

“Yup, me either. So . . . what are my options?”

“Well, I suppose I can board it up, leave it for Sandra and Bill to decide when they get back. Or I could try to . . . tidy the attic up a wee bit.” “Tidy it up?”

“Paint over some of that writing,” he said. “But that would mean leaving it open. I mean, I could lock the door, but it wouldn’t be worth boarding over the inside again, if we were planning to go back in. I don’t know how you feel about that.” I nodded, biting my lip. Truth be told, I didn’t want to sleep in this room again, and in fact I wasn’t sure if I could. The thought of lying in that bed, listening to the creak . . . creak . . . of the boards, with that demented writing just feet away from me behind nothing more sturdy than a locked cupboard door . . . well, it creeped me out. But the idea of boarding the room back up didn’t seem much better either.

“I think we should paint it,” I said at last. “If Sandra and Bill agree, of course. We can’t—we can’t just leave it. It’s too horrible.” Jack nodded. Then he pulled the bunch of keys out of his back pocket, where he had stashed them, and began winkling the long black attic key off the bunch.

“What are you doing?” I asked, just as it came clear with a little click. He held it out.

“Take it.”

“Me? But I don’t want—” I swallowed, trying not to show the depth of revulsion I felt. “I don’t want to go up there.” “I know that. But if it were me, I’d feel better knowing that I had the key in my own hands.” I pressed my lips together, then took the key from him. It was heavy, and very cold, but to my surprise, he was right. There was something . . . not quite powerful, but at least an illusion of control in holding the key in my own hands. That door was locked. And only I had the power to unlock it.

I pushed it into my jeans pocket. I was just trying to work out what to say, when Jack nodded again, but this time at his watch.

“Have you seen the time?”

I looked down at my phone.

“Shit.”

I was late to pick up the girls.

“I’d better go but—but thank you, Jack.”

“What for?” He looked genuinely surprised. “The key?”

“Not that. Just—I don’t know. Taking me seriously. Not making me feel like an idiot for being freaked out.” “Listen.” His face softened. “That writing freaked me out too, and I’m all the way across the courtyard. But it’s over, okay? No more mysterious noises, no more writing, no more wondering what’s behind that door. We know now, and it’s creepy and a little bit sad, but it’s done, okay?” “Okay,” I said, and I nodded. I should have known it was too good to be true.