Chill Read online

  Sebastian was stretched out on the bed, as unconcerned as ever. Nothing seemed to worry him. Charles envied him that. He leaned against the doorpost, frowning.

  “What d’you think disturbed him?”

  Sebastian looked up, puzzled. “Who?”

  “Samuel, of course. Who d’you think?”

  His brother shrugged. “I don’t know. He looked a bit pale, though.”

  “I’d love to know what it was,” Charles said.

  “We could ask him?”

  “Not likely. He might tell Fiona about it, though,” Charles added softly, thinking out loud to himself.

  “We could ask Fiona then.”

  Charles shook his head. “She’d never tell us.”

  Sebastian watched his brother in silence for a minute.

  “Why does it bother you so much?”

  “What?”

  “Samuel, living in the cottage.”

  “It doesn’t!”

  “Yes it does. You act all the time like he’s some kind of threat.”

  Charles didn’t answer at once. He looked at his brother, and for a brief moment thought about telling him about what had been happening to him lately. But the moment didn’t last long. Charles wasn’t used to confiding in anyone, least of all some story about a weird woman who appeared to him in his dreams at night, hissing dark threats.

  “He’s snooping around,” Charles said instead. “I just know he is. Why was he alone in the house in the first place?”

  “He was copying the map!”

  “I know that, but … oh, never mind.”

  Leaving Sebastian alone, he went back to his own room to brood.

  On the lawn beneath him the outside security light had clicked on, and flooded the snowy garden. Charles leant closer to the glass until his breath misted it, and peered down. Far below he could see two tiny figures, wrapped up in coats and boots, making their way under the trees. What were they talking about, he wondered? He watched until they disappeared, swallowed up by the surrounding darkness.

  “Will we ever be able to get out of here, do you think?” Samuel said, kicking at the nearest snowdrift.

  “It might take a while. Unless the Council can be bothered to send up a snowplough, and that doesn’t seem very likely.”

  They stood under the trees in the dark, the white snow beneath them barred with shadows.

  “Mum’s pestered them on the phone every day,” she went on, “but they say they have other priorities.”

  “So that’s it,” Samuel said. “We’re stuck!”

  “I thought you said it would be a good thing,” she reminded him.

  “That was before I realized this place was haunted.”

  “Mum wouldn’t like to hear you say that. She always insists there is no ghost at Dunadd.”

  “Does she?”

  Fiona nodded. “I heard her once at a dinner party. There was this awkward silence afterwards. None of the guests knew what to say. I remember it really well. I felt sorry for the person who said it – she gave them a right ticking off. Mum can do that, without really saying very much at all. She can make you feel this big.” She held up her hand, and closed the gap between finger and thumb.

  The pair of them were silent for a moment, thinking about the guests at the dinner party, and Fiona’s mother getting cross with whoever had been foolish enough to enquire about “the ghost story.” Samuel could imagine it, could picture the scene in the dining room of Dunadd House, the guests all sitting round the huge mahogany table, fire and candlelight flickering on the wooden panels behind them. Granny Hughes serving everyone with a quiet disgruntled subservience, using the best silver, which usually sat untouched on the sideboard, polished religiously every other day by Mr Hughes.

  “There must be more we could find out about this Weeping Woman,” Samuel insisted, glancing across at the dark mass of the house, one or two lights winking in the windows. It threw a massive shadow forward onto the snow. In the big bay window of the drawing room they could see the Christmas tree glittering in the dark.

  “Maybe something in the library will tell us more,” he added.

  Fiona gave him a sharp look. “Not possible. Mum doesn’t like us going in there without her permission. It makes her nervous. You know that.”

  “There must be a way,” he murmured. “What about at night?”

  “You realize you’ll be evicted from the cottage, if Mum catches you at it?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “That’s why I need your help.”

  She rolled her eyes. “What have I done to deserve this?”

  They looked at each other in the dark as if they had just struck a bargain.

  “We can be partners in crime,” he whispered.

  While Samuel and Fiona were making their plans, Charles was alone with his own worries. That night, after dark, he took up his torch and crept down the winding stone staircase of the tower to the first-floor landing below. He pushed open the door of the drawing room, sensing rather than seeing the shadows retreat before him. This dark house held no secrets for him, it was his home.

  Or did it?

  Charles crossed the drawing room and made his way to the forbidden library at the far end. He had seen and heard Fiona and Samuel snooping about in there the other day. If there were anything to find in that room then he, Charles, would be the one to find it and no one else. Samuel had no right, he fumed, no business … It was their house, not his; it was their sorrow, their loss. Any secrets or mysteries contained within its walls were theirs to bear, a private legacy that belonged only to them, the Morton children.

  He crossed the dark room to the green leather-topped writing desk in the centre. There it stood, largely untouched since the day his father died. He guessed that if there were anything worth seeing here, his mother would have confiscated it by now, secreted it away in some private hiding place, but it was worth a try. He bent down and began to search. The writing desk shuddered as he pulled open each drawer. Lots of papers burst from the drawers, old receipts and bills that had never been tidied or cleared away – his mother was not very good at throwing things out.

  When he found his father’s letter, written on the day he died, he sat back in the chair and stared at it for a long time. He shone the beam of the torch on it, reading the last words his father had written, then slid the letter into his pocket and carried it away with him, back to his room.

  Dusty Secrets

  Mrs Morton sat at the kitchen table, holding her mobile phone tensely to her ear. She had spent the best part of a morning trying to get through to the Council, and her nerves were in a bad state.

  “I’ve been trying to reach you for days,” she told them sharply, in her sternest possible tone.

  “You and the rest of the world, madam,” the man on the other end of the line replied. “Listen,” he said. “We have eight major towns in the Stirlingshire area which need attending to. “You are, I believe, the only residents on Sheriffmuir?”

  “Well no, as a matter of fact,” she began in a tone of righteous indignation. “There is the Sheriffmuir Inn and Lynns farm as well. We all …”

  “Yes, madam, but I understand the road up on Sheriffmuir is a single track lane? With no road markings?”

  “Yes, but …”

  “Then it is not a priority road. We may be clearing as far as the inn within the next few days, but the Council bears no responsibility for clearing the road beyond that point. And besides,” the man from the Council informed her, “if we were to clear the snow, your children would be the only ones in an empty classroom. All the schools in the Stirlingshire area are closed until further notice.”

  Mrs Morton put the phone down sharply.

  “I’m going back to bed,” she announced to the room in general.

  To help ease Mrs Morton’s bad mood, Granny Hughes suggested that a bout of spring-cleaning might do the trick.

  “What about getting the wee ones to clear those boxes in the attic for you? You’v
e been meaning to do that for ages now, and never got round to it.”

  “Count me out,” Charles said. “Too busy.”

  “Busy doing what?” Fiona snapped.

  “Ah, can’t say. Top secret.”

  “I’ll only do it if Samuel can help me,” Fiona bargained, quick as a flash.

  “It’s a deal,” her mother agreed.

  So Samuel and Fiona were assigned the task of sorting through the boxes of old toys and clothes that had been mouldering away under the eaves for the past decade.

  As they climbed the narrow ladder to the attic, Samuel felt more than a little apprehensive.

  “There’s no light up there, by the way,” Fiona told him. “The bulb went, and no one thought to replace it. So we’ll have to take a torch.”

  They inspected the boxes and crates in the shadows, old toys spilling from them, as well as bundles of smelly moth-eaten clothes.

  “Why we kept all of these things, I don’t know,” Fiona said. Then she rushed forward and bent down to examine an old dolls’ house.

  “I haven’t seen that for years,” she cried. “I could clean it up and put it back in my room.”

  “I think we’re supposed to get rid of stuff, not keep it,” Samuel reminded her.

  Dust filled their lungs and made them cough as they sorted through the contents of the boxes. Mrs Morton had given them a supply of black bin liners, and they were to fill these with any unwanted rubbish. As they worked, Samuel noticed an old wooden chest in the corner, slightly apart from the boxes and crates they were sorting. He wondered briefly what was inside it. Its lid was firmly shut so he thought nothing more about it; they were too busy to stop and explore. Half-way through the morning the torch began to flicker on and off, as if the battery was fading. At last it went off altogether, plunging them into darkness.

  “Samuel,” Fiona whispered, edging nearer to him. “Are you there?”

  “I’m here,” he whispered back. They clung to each other in the dark. It was pitch-black, and they could see nothing in front of their faces.

  “What are we going to do?” Fiona said hoarsely.

  “I don’t know.”

  “We can’t move.”

  “Wait till our eyes have adjusted to the darkness,” Samuel suggested hopefully.

  But while they waited, they began to hear a sound nearby. It was the sound of breathing, gentle but definite, as if someone were in the darkness beside them. Fiona clung even tighter to Samuel’s arm.

  “Can – you – hear – that?” she whispered slowly.

  He nodded. Then remembering she couldn’t see him, he added “I hear it.”

  “What – is – it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  It sounded as if it was just behind him. Samuel turned his head slowly, but could see nothing. He reached out a hand, and swept the air with it, seeing if he could make contact with anything, but accidentally knocked against a crate.

  “Ouch!” he hissed.

  “What? What is it?”

  “Nothing. I hurt my hand, that’s all.”

  “Samuel, I don’t like this.”

  There was a silence.

  “I can’t say I’m delighted by it either,” came the reply.

  Still the sound of gentle breathing, a thin in-drawing and releasing of breath came from the darkness behind them.

  Suddenly the torch sprang back to life. Samuel grabbed it and swung its beam into the shadows behind them. There was nothing there. Absolutely nothing.

  But …

  In a corner, pushed under the eaves, was the old wooden chest, which he had noticed before. Something had happened to it. Its lid had been thrust open, and the contents displayed.

  Samuel stared at it.

  “Is it just me, or wasn’t that shut before?”

  He played the torch beam over it.

  Fiona nodded. “I think it was.”

  Both of them crept closer, and the weak torchlight picked out a pile of old linen. Fiona rummaged about, lifting old tablecloths and heavily embroidered pillowcases.

  “There’s nothing here,” she said.

  Samuel lifted out a delicate piece of finely-stitched embroidery. “Someone was kept very busy,” he commented, examining it in the half-light.

  Fiona dipped her arm deeper into the chest, and suddenly felt a bundle of dry paper. She lifted the package out. It was tied with colourless ribbon that had almost completely frayed.

  “What’s that?” he asked, but Fiona wasn’t listening. She had gone deathly quiet.

  She and Samuel stared at what they’d found, examining it in the torchlight.

  At first it looked like a bundle of letters, but as they turned the pages over they began to realize that these were pages torn from a journal. “The nineteenth day of April 1708” they read. “My name is Catherine Morton.”

  The torch began to fade again, and Fiona knocked it twice against the side of the chest in frustration.

  “Damn it!” she hissed. “I want to read what it says.”

  “Quick. Let’s take these downstairs and read them before the battery goes again.”

  Catherine’s Journal

  They took the bundle of papers and made their way down the rickety ladder.

  Mrs Morton appeared suddenly from her room, alert to any sound.

  “Finished already?” she demanded.

  “Er, not quite,” Fiona said. “We’ve binned up a few things, but we just wanted to take a break.”

  “I hope you haven’t left it in a mess?”

  “We’ll get back to it in a minute,” Fiona muttered, her eyes gleaming with anticipation.

  “All right then,” she said irritably, and turned her back on them crossly.

  Charles withdrew into the shadows of the drawing room as they passed, to avoid being seen. He knew they had found something, and wanted to know what it was.

  “The snow is beginning to get to her,” Fiona whispered as they made their way down the staircase and along the corridor to the boot room.

  Across the courtyard Samuel’s cottage was empty. Isabel was buried in her studio again, hammering away at a lumpy piece of metal, a look of pure jubilation on her face. Fiona and Samuel had the privacy they needed.

  They went along to Samuel’s small end room, closed the door, sat on the bed and began to examine their find. The writing was faded and difficult to read, with a language and spelling that wasn’t entirely familiar to them, but with careful patience they managed to decipher what it had to say. A girl spoke to them from the past, a twelve-year-old girl with a story to tell.

  The nineteenth day of April 1708

  My name is Catherine Morton. To mark my twelfth birthdy I have decided to begin a journal. This is it. From now on, whativer I have to say, I will say it betwixt these pages.

  I have lived at Dunadd all my life, and I have a suspicion I will die heer.

  My bedroom is up in the tower, above the staircase, where none other can reach me. I have two older brothers, who tease me more than they oghte. I keepe to myself.

  The house is verie old. It has stoode on this muir for hundreds of years. It has been in my family for generations, a legacy stretching far back into the past.

  Needless to say, I am supposed to be educated as a lady. That is to say not educated at all, in fact, except to sit nicely and sew with a nete hand. But I’m fortunate in that we live so remote from society that I’m allowed to run free, within reason. There are the gardens, the woodes, the boating pond, and of course the muir itself, stretching away into endless emptiness like the sea lapping around an island.

  Instead of sewing my sampler as I oghte, I spend my time in the hills. My brothers and I whittle bows and arrows for ourselves, and play games. Sometimes these games can become dedly earnest. My brothers are not the most patient and mild-mannered of people, but I know how to handle them. It is their wish to bully me, but I have a manner of making them feart. They think I’m a witch because I hear voices sometimes. There are voi
ces in the house, you see. I hear them, a boy and a girl, laughing, fighting, squeals of delight, sometimes quarrelling. Even banging. I am woken at night by their antics.

  This afternoon I was in the drawing room, stitching my sampler because it was raining and we were not able to go outside to play, and I heard them again. A faint tinkle of laughter. Wicked. As if bottled-up. I looked up from my sewing and there was silence suddenly. No more voices again after that.

  Mrs Fletcher was busy bustling about in the room behind me, and she tutted and said “Aye, that’s right. It’s good to see thee stitching thy sampler for a change, stead of gallivanting about that muir. Thou shalt have to grow accustomed to quiet pastimes now thou art growing up.”

  I tried not to mind at her words. I don’t think I like the idea of growing up.

  For my birthday I was given this booke, a leather-bound volume. Mother taught me to read and write, and she considers it will be good for me to keepe a journal.

  I shall not let anyone read it, however. I am afeared they would not be plesed if they culd see what is written betwixt these pages. Mrs Fletcher says that Mother has new-fangled ideas in teaching a wee slip of a lass to read and write, and that my father would strongly disapprove if he knew. Thankfully he is too busy to notice. So I make as if not to draw attention to myself and pretend ignorance as necesserie. Tis better this way.