Shiver Read online

  They both stared at it for a long time.

  “I wonder who the two children are supposed to be?” Samuel asked, studying it.

  “At your detective work again, are you?”

  Charles’s dark tousled head appeared round the door.

  “Charles!” Fiona gasped. “You made me jump!”

  “Sorry. Anyway, what are you two doing in here?”

  “Just looking!” Samuel was quick to reply.

  Charles gave him a concentrated look. “I know you two. You don’t give up, do you?”

  “What?” Samuel said, trying to look innocent.

  “You know … this place might seem like a museum to you, but it is our home.”

  “He knows that, Charles,” Fiona cut in. “Don’t be so rude.”

  “I’m not being rude. I’m just reminding our friend here that this isn’t a theme park.”

  “I never thought it was,” Samuel said.

  “It’s a strange old house,” Fiona sighed. “Even you have to admit that, Charles.”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Look at this,” she added, pointing at the tapestry. Charles peered closely at it.

  “What about it?” he said. “It’s always been there.”

  “I know,” Fiona added, “but like Samuel says … who are the children in the picture supposed to be? And why did Catherine Morton stitch them into her tapestry?”

  Charles glanced at her quickly. “How do you know it was her?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” She showed him the initials in the corner.

  Charles nodded slowly. “Oh yeah … I guess you’re right. I’d never really looked at it before.”

  “I was just wondering … that was all,” Samuel broke in.

  “Curiosity killed the cat,” Charles remarked, as they all walked out of the library into the huge drawing room beyond.

  “This place has so many secrets,” Samuel sighed. “Doesn’t it ever drive you mad?”

  Charles shrugged. “I don’t think about it. Some of them we will find out … and others will remain a mystery, I expect.”

  “What makes you say that?” Samuel said.

  “He’s looking for inspiration,” Fiona cried. “He’s writing a ghost story for school, aren’t you, Charles?”

  “Are you?” Samuel asked him.

  “Private, thank you very much.” Charles shook his head dismissively. “Got to run. Things to do.”

  Fiona and Samuel watched him disappear up to the tower, taking the stairs two at a time. His room lay at the top, far away from prying eyes.

  “Lucky devil,” Samuel said, watching him go.

  “Why?” Fiona glanced at him.

  “Well, wouldn’t it be cool to have a bedroom at the top of a tower?” he added. “Honestly, Fiona, you take this place for granted sometimes.”

  “I suppose I do,” she replied, but she was looking vague and distracted again. Samuel knew that look.

  “What is it?” he asked, waiting for her to elaborate. He knew she would, eventually.

  “Well,” she began. “It’s just …”

  “Just what?” he prompted.

  “That tapestry,” she went on.

  “What about it?”

  “Well, it’s got me thinking. Do you remember the entry in Catherine Morton’s journal?”

  “Which one,” he murmured.

  “The one that was pinned open at the museum, in Edinburgh … the day we went to visit?”

  “What about it?” He waited.

  “They thought she was a witch, because she heard voices,” Fiona explained. “You know … she wrote about hearing a boy and girl laughing and quarrelling. Remember? The noise used to wake her up.”

  “But what’s that got to do with the tapestry?” Samuel looked baffled.

  “Don’t you see?” she cried, exasperated. “The boy and the girl in the sampler? Perhaps they’re the same ones as in Catherine Morton’s diary. Perhaps that’s who she heard?”

  “Just so long as we don’t start hearing anything ourselves,” Samuel said.

  Their voices grew fainter as they wandered away down the passage.

  Although the children didn’t know it, eyes were watching them from the shadows, listening to their voices as they whispered about their problems. Up in Charles’s room someone waited … had always been waiting.

  Chris Morton had sometimes suspected that Charles was adversely affected by the house, and now and again aired the idea of moving from Dunadd altogether. She suspected that her son’s dark moods were more than teenage hormones, but perhaps it was all in her imagination. After all … he was getting to a difficult age and fourteen-year-old boys were known to be unpredictable and secretive in their habits.

  This is what she told herself.

  On the landing below, the grandfather clock ticked in the silence: a comforting familiar sound.

  The Secret Staircase

  It was thoughts of this tapestry and the two figures in it that prompted Fiona and Samuel to start looking. They wanted to know who the children were. While Charles was away upstairs in his tower room, writing his precious ghost story, they wandered round Dunadd … searching for clues.

  “Samuel, what exactly are we looking for?” Fiona asked, as she followed him about the dark passageways of the house, trying doors and opening cupboards.

  His head reappeared from a broom cupboard, a cobweb draped across the top of it. “I don’t know.”

  “You’ve … er …” she pointed to the top of his head.

  He pulled the sticky cobweb off and flung it to the floor. “Place could do with a clean,” he remarked.

  “Don’t tell Granny that,” Fiona said. “Anyway, you’re poking in places where we don’t normally go.”

  “That’s the point! We’re looking in places where nobody usually goes … where anything could have been hidden away, without anyone knowing about it.” Fiona looked sceptical and fed up.

  After taking a break for lunch, Samuel made a decision. “D’you know what …? I think we should go back to the library.”

  “What for?”

  “Because that’s where all the problems seem to begin and end in this house.”

  Fiona shrugged and trotted after him, glad that Charles couldn’t see them now. He would be sure to have something to say about them conducting their own investigation.

  They pushed open the library door. Shelves of books towered to the ceiling. Samuel scanned the room with his eyes for any clues. On one of the bookshelves stood a marble figure, the head and shoulders of some stuffy-looking Greek philosopher.

  “Plato,” Fiona explained.

  “Who?”

  She shrugged. “He’s a Greek philosopher. That’s all I know. And for some reason we have a bust of him. Or rather … Dad did.”

  Samuel raised a tentative hand and explored it with his fingertips. He had the briefest fantasy that a touch of the sculpture would impart some magic knowledge to him, and set them on their way to finding the answers to their mystery. But no such luck. The marble bust just sat there, looking slightly pompous and hideous.

  “Ah well.” Samuel turned his back on it, sighing deeply. It was then his eyes fell upon the massive stone fireplace, set into the side of the wall.

  “Big fireplace that, for a room this size,” he commented.

  Fiona nodded.

  “Especially as it’s never lit,” she added.

  Their eyes met. “It’s funny,” Fiona said, “but now you mention it, I’ve never noticed a chimney on this part of the house.”

  “Maybe it shares the same chimney as the drawing room?” Samuel said. “That’s why you can’t see it from outside.”

  “That’s not possible, is it?”

  The two of them approached the fireplace together, and peered up into the darkness.

  “Blocked!” Samuel concluded.

  “Or, like I said … no chimney.”

  “A false fireplace you mean?” he asked.

 
“But why?” Fiona shook her head in bewilderment. “I mean … I suppose it could have just been decorative … but it seems a bit pointless.”

  “It’s an old house,” Samuel shrugged. “Someone must have had their reasons. Plenty of them, probably.”

  He was standing inside the fireplace now, feeling around the back of it with his hands. One of the stone slabs seemed to give slightly.

  “Fiona,” he gasped. “Look at this.”

  She crouched down, bumping herself on the old servants’ bell as she did so. Samuel pressed again upon the loose stone slab. Both of them watched in amazement as a section of the fireplace moved aside to reveal a dim passageway and a staircase leading up into the gloom beyond.

  “Wow! This is amazing,” Fiona breathed softly. “I never knew this was here!”

  Samuel turned to look at her. “What else don’t you know?”

  As they bent to examine the opening more closely, a rush of cold air washed against their faces and they shivered.

  “It’s freezing in there.”

  “Where do you think it goes?” Fiona asked.

  “Well, I think we’re about to find out.” Samuel was about to step into the darkness, but Fiona stopped him, her hand on his arm.

  “Wait … we need a torch first.”

  She rooted around in her father’s old leather desk, then produced a flashlight, switching it on and off to test the battery.

  “Seems okay,” Fiona said and handed it to Samuel. “Right. You go first.”

  “Why me?”

  “You’re a boy. You like taking risks.” She pushed him in front of her.

  The two of them began to climb the steep narrow steps, with the help of the searchlight.

  Fiona gave a wistful glance back at the entrance. She could just make it out below them, as the darkness swallowed them whole and they left the light far behind. What if someone came into the library and closed the secret staircase off again, not knowing they were in here? They might remain here forever. Her blood ran cold at the prospect. It was a risk they would just have to take. She decided not to mention her fears to Samuel. There was no point in making both of them nervous.

  “Where d’you think it comes out?” she asked instead, as they climbed.

  The staircase turned an abrupt corner and opened out into a low passageway.

  “We must be above the drawing room now,” Samuel replied.

  “Try not to make any noise,” she added. “We don’t want anyone below to hear us.”

  The way twisted and turned and soon it was hard to work out exactly which part of the house they were in anymore. They felt like mice, scurrying about behind the wooden panelling.

  Eventually they came to a dead end.

  “What’s the matter?” Fiona asked, peering over his shoulder.

  “We can’t go any further,” Samuel said.

  “But we must be able to,” she insisted, disappointment flooding her.

  He shook his head. “This is the end, I’m afraid.”

  “Where d’you think we are?” Fiona breathed.

  Samuel hazarded a guess. “Somewhere up in the tower, I’d guess. The walls seem to be either brick or stone here.” He rapped on the side of the passageway with his knuckles. Some of it sounded hollow and gave off an eerie echo.

  “But why has it been blocked off?”

  “I don’t know.” Samuel was at a loss. “What a find, though. Can’t wait to tell the others.

  “Maybe we should start heading back,” Fiona murmured, still concerned by the thought of being trapped in there, forever.

  It seemed to take an age to find their way back again and, for Fiona, the sight of daylight at the bottom of the narrow stone staircase was a huge relief as she had started to feel claustrophobic.

  “Phew! Am I glad to be out of there!” she gasped, as they burst back into the library.

  Samuel wasn’t listening. “We’ve found a secret staircase. How brilliant is that?”

  But Fiona was staring at something over Samuel’s shoulder.

  “What is it?”

  She shook her head, trying to formulate the words. She had just seen – or thought she’d seen – a small, dark, shadowy shape sweep past the open doorway; so fast she wasn’t even sure she’d seen it at all. But it left her with an inexplicable feeling.

  “Hello?” Fiona called, walking slowly towards the entrance to the drawing room. “Is anyone there?”

  “What are you doing?” Samuel began. Fiona put her finger to her lips.

  “Sssssh!”

  Silence. Then … a child’s laughter. As faint as a breath of air. Hardly discernible.

  “Did you hear that?” Fiona whispered hoarsely, spinning round to face Samuel.

  He nodded. “It could have been anything.”

  “Charles or Sebastian, you mean? I don’t think so,” Fiona said.

  “Then what do you think it was?” Samuel asked nervously.

  They looked at each other.

  Anything was possible in this old house. Maybe they had found Catherine Morton’s laughing children.

  Charles’s Story

  In his bedroom, up in the tower, Charles glanced at his computer screen. It was switched on, but he hadn’t been near it in hours. He sometimes liked playing computer games, or downloading music from the internet onto his iPod. One of the games he played followed the adventures of a boy trapped in a haunted house, who had to find his way out of a maze of passageways. Like all computer games, it was repetitive and unsatisfying in the end, but he liked it and played it obsessively, to the point where it almost became a fixation. He was also trying to write his ghost story for school, but it wasn’t going very well. Fiona had put him off with her comments.

  It could be so boring in the school holidays with no one but his brother and sister to hang about with … apart from Samuel. Fiona had taken to him and the two were as thick as thieves. Part of him envied his sister for having a friend she could confide in. Charles was a loner. He didn’t confess his secrets to anyone. Not even to his brother, Seb, who had the room next door.

  He stared out of the window at the grounds and garden below, turning when he heard a light tapping noise on the keyboard behind him. On the blank computer screen had appeared one sinister little word.

  Hello

  That was strange. He moved closer, peered at the screen, then pressed the delete button. It was an instinctive reaction – an attempt to remove the evidence, erase it. Words didn’t appear of their own accord like that. Had he been typing earlier and left something on the screen? A computer could hardly produce text all by itself, no matter how amazing modern technology might be.

  “That’s weird,” he said to himself. His voice sounded uncannily loud in the silence of the enclosed space. His room was quite small, without much furniture in it, apart from a bed, the computer desk, a bookcase and a wardrobe. He liked it this spartan. He didn’t need much.

  On an impulse he sat down on the chair, and typed in the words:

  Hello to you, too, whoever you are.

  “Stupid,” he muttered out loud. He pressed the delete button again, and watched the sentence disappear, swallowed up by the cursor.

  Then he swivelled about on his chair and wrote a fresh sentence, beginning with the title of his story.

  SHIVER. A ghost story.

  He liked that. He’d made a start. Now – he stared thoughtfully at the window – he needed an atmospheric sentence to begin with: something that would make readers’ spines tingle.

  The snow began to fall steadily, blanketing the hills in silence.

  Too wordy? he wondered.

  Oh, it’s not too bad, he told himself. In fact, it’s fairly promising.

  He turned back to the computer screen, his fingers on the keyboard, but his cheeks suddenly drained of colour. From out of the screen drifted a face, its features assembling themselves before his eyes as if from smoke.

  He blinked his eyes.

  Was he imagining things? He
shook his head to clear it of any fuzz. The face slowly faded out again, as if it had never been there.

  How could that be? He reached out a hand and touched the computer screen. Smooth and cold to the touch, like porcelain. Nothing there. An electric buzz emerging from the back of it. That was all.

  Surely writing a ghost story couldn’t summon up a real ghost, could it? That was absurd. Completely bizarre. I mean, I know my English teachers tell me to use my imagination, he thought, but this is taking it a bit far.

  “If this is some kind of joke,” he muttered, “then it’s not very funny.” There was no way he could carry on writing his ghost story now.

  He made for the door and bolted downstairs.

  After he’d gone, the empty room seemed to let out a faint exhalation that was almost a sigh. A shady figure emerged, hovering near the window. It drifted slowly towards the computer and blew onto the screen. The opening lines of Charles’s ghost story vanished from sight.

  Charles found the others in the kitchen.

  “Where’s Mum?” he asked.

  “Gone shopping,” Fiona told him. “With Isabel. House to ourselves.”

  “Oh!”

  “What’s up?”

  “Nothing,” he mumbled.

  “Charles, you’re white as a sheet,” she persisted. “What is it?”

  “You’ve not been trying to write your ghost story again, have you?” Sebastian teased him.

  “How did you know?” he snapped, glancing quickly in Fiona’s direction. For a brief moment Charles wondered if his brother had had anything to do with the hazy face he’d seen drift from the screen when he was writing. Perhaps Sebastian had done something to his computer? He was a bit of a technical whizkid. Yes, perhaps that was it, he thought. It was just some kind of elaborate hoax.