Shiver Page 13

  The old man sighed. “What do I think?” He paused and was silent for a moment. “I think … the dead are best left in peace.”

  The children looked at him in disappointment. It was not what they wanted to hear, but it was true.

  “If their graves are empty, then so be it. There is nothing we can do about that.”

  Fiona shook her head. “You’re wrong,” she cried. “We could find the secret room. We could find out whether or not they were flung into a plague pit, and what happened to them.”

  Mr MacFarlane looked at her. “And once you have found out all the information you can …? What then?”

  She hesitated. “Then we’ll know,” she said, defensively, her voice wavering a little as the others looked at her.

  “Know what?”

  “We’ll know what happened to Eliza and her brother.”

  “And will knowing make any difference to the children? Or to yourselves?”

  Samuel spoke up for the first time, defending the desperate attempts of his friend to hold her ground against the old man’s reasoning. “Knowledge always makes a difference,” he said.

  Mr MacFarlane nodded. “Good answer. But is it the right one?”

  They concluded their discussion, with nothing more to say on the subject. Mr MacFarlane knew nothing about any plague pits nearby. Hunger at last drove them downstairs, but it was an uneasy Fiona who sat before her meal that lunchtime, mulling over all that had been said, still desperate for answers. She was not prepared to let sleeping dogs lie. Nor were Samuel and her brothers.

  The Secret Room

  After lunch, the children congregated upstairs in Charles’s tower bedroom, far from the adults. Mr MacFarlane had stayed for a meal, before heading back to his farmhouse, and Granny Hughes was tidying and clearing the kitchen. They lounged on Charles’s bed, with Sebastian flopped in the chair.

  “I still think their bodies are buried in a plague pit somewhere,” Samuel said. “That’s why Eliza can’t really be sure about where their graves are. She just knows they’re buried elsewhere.”

  “But why go to all the fuss of a headstone with their names on it?” Fiona wanted to know.

  “They were a well-to-do family. Of course they’d want proper graves and memorial headstones … to show they loved their children,” Charles put in.

  “What a morbid subject this is!” Sebastian said, clicking his fingers idly.

  “Isn’t it?” Fiona said.

  “I think it’s time we tried to find this secret room … if there really is one,” Charles said, leaping off the bed suddenly. The others followed. He hurried down the stairs and strode off in the direction of the utility room, emerging a few minutes later with a hammer, a chisel and one or two other heavy and lethal-looking tools. Samuel glanced nervously over his shoulder, waiting for Granny or someone to discover them. But no one appeared.

  “What are you planning on doing with those?” Fiona asked her brother uneasily, as he stood in the open doorway, weighing them in his hands.

  “You’ll see,” he said.

  “Mum is going to kill us,” Fiona murmured, not for the first time, as they followed Charles back upstairs to the tower. The spiralling stone staircase resounded to their footfalls, but they tried to be as quiet as possible, so as not to alert the adults.

  “This secret room …” Charles said.

  “If there is one,” Sebastian interrupted.

  “… has to be next door to my room,” Charles finished, ignoring his brother.

  “Excellent deduction, Sherlock!”

  Fiona nudged Sebastian sharply in the ribs.

  They stopped outside Charles’s bedroom door. He moved along slightly, feeling the wall with his hands.

  “A doorway ought to be … possibly … round about … here,” he muttered to himself. Then, to everyone’s horror and amazement, he picked up his hammer and swung it hard against the wall. The whole staircase seemed to reverberate with the impact.

  “Don’t you think someone might hear?” Samuel said.

  “What if someone comes?” Fiona added.

  “We’ve got time,” Charles breathed heavily, as he took another swing. “It has to be done.”

  As he made another aim for the wall, Charles found himself thinking about his nightmare. If they succeeded in breaking through this wall and finding a secret room on the other side of it, would this make things better or worse? He had no idea, but he knew they had to take the risk. They couldn’t give up now.

  Down in the kitchen, the adults were busy about their separate tasks and didn’t hear the noise at first. But after a while, it was impossible to miss. The whole house shuddered and shook with each impact.

  Granny and Chris Morton looked at each other in alarm.

  “What now?” Chris said. Without saying another word, she began to make her way upstairs.

  At the top of the tower, Charles, Sebastian, Samuel and Fiona were banging and crashing with avid determination, swinging tools and attacking the plaster with a vengeance. They were on a mission now and nothing would stand in their way.

  Eventually they broke through, just as Chris Morton began to climb the spiralling tower staircase.

  With a cry of triumph, they peered through the jagged opening and saw what they had been hoping to find. The hole revealed a secret chamber that had been hidden and bricked-up for four centuries. Debris littered the ground and dust flew through the air, making them cough and splutter. They stepped through into the secret room. They had reached “the other side,” no matter how crude and unorthodox their method.

  Charles and Samuel tried to wrench open the window shutters. They broke apart in their hands, riddled with damp and rot, and a dim light streamed through the ivy and into the room for the first time in four hundred years, alighting on shelves and ruined books, and a scatter of broken toys on the floor. Spiders and mice scuttled away into corners, and a powder-grey dust lay thick as snow everywhere.

  Fiona dipped a finger into it and smelled it.

  “It’s lime, I think,” she said. “Chalk and lime.”

  “Didn’t they used to cover the bodies of the dead with lime?” Samuel asked. “To stop disease from spreading. I read it in that book in the library, when it mentioned the plague …” His voice trailed away.

  There was no one inside the room. No helpless boy crying for his mother, no pale girl … but there was evidence of their habitation everywhere. There were discarded objects, broken furniture, all draped with cobwebs. Then their eyes alighted upon the most telling detail of all. A group of crudely-carved wooden soldiers lay on the floor. They had been arranged into battle formation, and although one or two of them had toppled over, the rest still held their ground. It seemed that only recently a child had been playing with them.

  The four children were instantly silenced, the realization of what they could see flooding through every corner of their minds. They had found their two little ghost children.

  Chris Morton now stood in the broken-down opening behind them, rubble and lath and plaster littered all about her feet.

  “What on earth do you think you are doing?” she asked slowly, staring at them.

  By way of an answer, they moved aside, pointing to the scene within the secret chamber.

  Chris Morton gets a Shock

  Chris Morton stared in amazement at what the children had uncovered: the toys, the beds … evidence of habitation everywhere.

  “My goodness,” she breathed quietly, on a sigh. “My goodness me!”

  Finally, she found her voice. “All this time, the house has hidden a secret room, and we never knew it was here.”

  The four children gazed at her in silence. Seeing the little soldiers brought it home to them.

  “This is …” she hesitated, trying to find the right words. “This is quite something. We ought to think about contacting someone … telling them about it. Historic Scotland, maybe.”

  “Do we really want other people tramping about the place,
poking their noses in?” Charles said.

  “But it’s history … it’s evidence …” she murmured.

  “Evidence of what? Of cruelty against children in 1604!” Fiona exploded.

  Everyone glanced at her in surprise. “Well … it’s true! They were left here to die.” Fiona was unapologetic.

  “No one could help it. Their mother probably had no choice,” Samuel said.

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Chris Morton said. “What’s 1604 got to do with anything? Are you saying you know something about the children who slept in this room? In all this decay and filth?”

  The children looked sheepish. “We’ve been meaning to tell you” Fiona began “… but we were afraid to.”

  Their mother gazed sternly at them all. “Well now’s your chance. Fill me in,” she commanded. And so they began to tell their story, of what they knew so far.

  “And it’s all led to this,” Mrs Morton sighed, unable to believe the evidence of her own eyes. “This terrible room, with its …” she turned her back on it.

  “I need time to think,” she added. “There’s an awful lot to take in.”

  Chris Morton ordered the children downstairs. She would deal with the mess later. Once they had gone, she strode into the library, a room she never usually liked to frequent. But now she needed to be on her own. She sat down at her husband’s leather-topped desk and gazed at the bookshelves. What nightmare had been enacted within these walls that she called home? What was she to do? Was it time to move on, at last?

  She gazed up at the gloomy portraits of her husband’s ancestors on the walls around her. They offered no help. Then her eye alighted on the framed tapestry, the sampler which Catherine Morton had stitched. She looked at it for a long time. Then she tucked it beneath her arm and made as if to leave.

  She passed through the drawing room, but when she got to the landing outside her own room, she froze.

  Two children had appeared at the end of the corridor, a boy and a girl, standing side by side. She had time to observe that they were holding hands and that their feet were bare. They stared at Chris Morton as if in entreaty … as if demanding something of her, but she did not know what it was. She had never seen them before. This was the first time. And, unbeknown to her, would be the last. It was a while before anyone moved. Then, almost imperceptibly, the children faded away and were gone.

  Clutching the framed tapestry to her, she hurried down the staircase. The others were gathered in the kitchen, telling Granny Hughes about their discovery of the secret room upstairs.

  Chris Morton hesitated outside the door before deciding to join them. She remembered the curse of Catherine Morton and the trouble they had been through last winter.

  She had made her decision. It was time to leave Dunadd behind. She would let everyone know as soon as possible.

  Down in the basement, it was dark and eerie. Mr Hughes, with the help of Charles, was attempting to see if anything could be done about the dodgy state of the electricity. They located the power box, and Mr Hughes shook his head sagely.

  “Just as I thought,” he murmured. “A loose connection.” After more minutes of tinkering, with Charles holding a torch for him, the problem seemed to be resolved. “You know this wiring’s faulty,” Mr Hughes added. “She should get it seen to.” He pulled down a lever. Instantly, the house was flooded with light. They heard a cheer coming from above.

  “That’s pleased everyone,” Mr Hughes grinned.

  The huge building buzzed into life and blazed with unaccustomed light. The boiler fired up, the radiators started ticking, TVs and radios began to mutter all over the house.

  Chris Morton heard a happy, triumphant yell coming from the kitchen.

  “Hurray,” someone bellowed.

  By the time she joined them they were already celebrating, unaware that things were about to change forever.

  Running Away

  “But why?” Fiona protested, glaring at her mother and fighting to hold back the tears.

  “Why?” her mother repeated. “Because I’ve seen those children for myself … just like you have!”

  “I know that, but shouldn’t we find out what happened to them?” Fiona cried.

  “I dread to think what happened to them,” Chris Morton said quietly.

  She would not be drawn any further on the subject.

  “It’s been a hard decision to make, but I believe it’s a sensible one … under the circumstances.”

  She sounds like a politician, Fiona thought bitterly.

  Granny Hughes said nothing. She stood at the kitchen sink, wondering how she would cope without life up at Dunadd House. It was certainly time for her and Jim to take a rest from all the hard work, but there was no doubt about it, she would miss the place. And she would miss the children. She’d known them since they were babies. Her throat constricted at the thought of it, and she could hardly bring herself to look at Mrs Morton. Mr Hughes would be devastated when she told him. She had not dared to do so yet. He was out chopping wood in the barn, loading it onto the back of the trailer. His heart would be broken when she told him. The two of them would be lost without Dunadd, in spite of its ghosts.

  She had been right after all then. Granny had always suspected that this place was cursed. She’d felt it in her bones.

  Fiona stormed off next door to find Samuel.

  “What?” he gazed at her open-mouthed when she told him. His heart sank. “You’re all leaving?”

  She nodded grimly.

  His mother stood behind them, listening. So the Mortons were finally going to leave Dunadd. If they were leaving, Isabel thought to herself philosophically, then there was certainly no future for herself and Samuel here.

  Without saying anything, she left the two children to their private commiserations and wandered across the courtyard to the barn. She pushed the door open onto the dusty silence and ran her hand along the worktops. She had put so much effort into creating this space for herself. All I need is an empty room, she thought. But she would miss working here in the old barn on Sheriffmuir, listening to the wind nudging at the door and looking out of the small window at the bare trees and the looming tower of Dunadd.

  Just then the door was pushed open and Chris Morton appeared.

  “Isabel, I have some news I thought you should know.”

  “I’ve just heard,” Isabel said. “The children were talking.”

  “Oh, I see …” Chris Morton looked apologetic. “I am sorry. I know how happy you and Samuel have been here, but I know it’s the right thing to do. I can’t risk anything else happening to my sons. I’m sure you feel the same way about Samuel.”

  Isabel nodded.

  “I’m going to make arrangements as soon as possible and then put the house on the market. That should hopefully give you enough time to find other accommodation.”

  Isabel was silent. She didn’t relish the prospect of living on in the cottage while the huge house next door stood empty. It would be very strange indeed. She would have to look into it right away. As soon as the snow began to melt. Her heart felt heavy as she put things into boxes and jars. Might as well make a start, she reasoned, trying to remain positive.

  Farewells

  After the discovery of the secret room, the two child spirits had kept their distance.

  Everyone had made a concerted effort to tidy up the mess resulting from Charles’s brutal assault on the brickwork; they swept up the dust and debris, trying to leave the offending area as clean as possible. Sometimes, one or other of them would drift upstairs, into the exposed inner chamber that had lurked within the tower for four centuries. It was difficult to believe that it had always been there.

  Fiona went to the window, peering through the ivy and the broken shutters at the scene below. Light had entered this room for the first time in four hundred years, and the objects inside it were only just beginning to adjust to the intrusion. Spiders and mice no longer made it their home. Eliza and John had not been seen s
ince. What had happened to them? Fiona wondered. Where had they gone?

  Inspecting John’s wooden soldiers made her sad. She wanted to give him something back, so she had asked her brothers for some of their old toys. They gathered together a pirate ship and some tiny model figures and left them in the centre of the room. In addition, Fiona had retrieved an old satin party dress from the back of her wardrobe, knowing it would fit Eliza perfectly. She took it upstairs and laid it on one of the beds, which had been brushed and swept clean of both cobwebs and dirt. What would they make of their gifts?

  The snow had gone and both families were counting the days before it was time to say their farewells. It was a difficult period for all of them … unsettling, to say the least.

  Packing cases and crates filled the hallway, and Samuel skirted his way around them in search of Fiona. She was sitting halfway up the stairs, her head in her hands.

  “We can keep in touch,” he said, nudging her.

  She didn’t speak at first.

  “That’s not the point,” she muttered. “The boys and I were born here. How can we leave it behind?”

  Samuel slid onto the step below her.

  “You’re right,” he said. “I’ve only lived here a year, but I’m still going to miss it. I can’t believe it.”

  “Neither can I.”

  “Why is she being so stubborn?” Fiona cried. “She just goes ahead and makes a decision that affects us all without even asking us. How come adults have all the power?”

  “Because they think they know what’s best for us,” he suggested.

  “Well they don’t … especially not in this case.”

  “We can’t let it happen,” Fiona protested. She was sitting with her brothers in their father’s old library.

  “We have to,” Charles told her. “You have to accept it. There’s nothing we can do about it.”