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  “That’s true,” Sebastian said.

  “Or …” Fiona began to elaborate, “it could just lead to a room that was closed off for some unknown reason.”

  Samuel, tuning in to her train of thought, added jokingly, “where two ghostly children live.”

  Charles stood still, horrified. “What …? Until we woke them?”

  “Look, I’m going back downstairs,” Sebastian said, feeling suddenly spooked by the conversation. “One of us needs to make sure the coast is clear.”

  “Chic-ken,” Fiona sang in a high-pitched, sing-song voice.

  “I’m just being sensible, that’s all.”

  “He’s right,” Samuel said. “We wouldn’t want to get trapped here. Suppose someone closed the entrance by mistake, not knowing we were in here?”

  “That’s what I thought last time,” Fiona admitted, “but I was trying hard not to say anything.”

  “Exactly … so I’ll just shuffle along, back downstairs,” Sebastian said.

  “D’you need the torch?” Charles called back over his shoulder.

  “I’ll manage,” his brother replied.

  “Good. I wasn’t going to give it to him, anyway,” Charles added, as Sebastian disappeared. “We need it ourselves.”

  They bent their heads low as the passage twisted and turned.

  “See, here? This is where I think we come near to the tower,” Samuel said, tapping Charles on the shoulder.

  “You could be right.”

  They went as far as they could, until they came up against a blank wall like last time. They tapped on it.

  “Maybe there’s some way of opening this?” Fiona suggested. “Maybe it’s not a wall at all … but an entrance. Like the fireplace downstairs.”

  “How would we know?” Charles said, shining the torch into every crevice and crack before them.

  Samuel took a penknife out of his pocket, and began sliding it between the joints in the stone brickwork. Nothing. Again, they’d drawn a blank.

  “Blast!” Fiona cried out in frustration, and rapped her hand against the wall.

  Immediately they heard some kind of shuffling going on behind it. Muffled voices.

  They stood still and listened. Charles recognized the familiar sounds. They were the same as he’d heard the night before. This time, they were more muffled, because they were coming from beyond a brick wall, instead of behind wooden panelling.

  “That’s what I heard last night,” Charles exclaimed, turning to the others, his eyes bright with excitement. “Maybe we’re right next to my bedroom in the tower. And perhaps, if we can’t get into the sealed-off room from here, there’s a hidden entrance in my room too. After all, it’s only wood panelling. Not stone, as far as we know.”

  “We’ve got to tell Mum about this!” Fiona cried.

  “What on earth for?” Charles asked in surprise.

  “Be sensible!” Fiona hissed. “We can’t exactly not tell her about this hidden staircase, can we? It’s too exciting.”

  “I suppose you’re right. But she doesn’t need to know about the noises … or the fact that we think there’s a secret room somewhere,” he added. “You know what she’s like. She’ll go into one of her tailspins again.” Fiona grunted in agreement.

  “Sssh, you two,” Samuel whispered. He was leaning with his ear against the cold stone wall. A small terrified child’s voice could be heard beyond.

  “Come away, Eliza, please,” it whined. “I like this not at all.”

  “They are out there,” another voice replied. “Just on the other side. I know ’tis so. I can hear them.”

  “Please, Eliza,” the other begged. “Please come away. You will draw them towards us.”

  “Shush now. There is no need to be afeart.”

  “But I am, Eliza. I am. I want our mother.”

  There was a pause, as if the boy was afraid at having spoken the words out loud.

  The other voice sounded chill and hostile now.

  “You know that is not possible. Do not speak of her again.”

  “But Eliza …”

  Then they heard a soft whimpering, of a child crying. It broke Fiona’s heart to listen to it. It sounded so forlorn.

  Oh please, someone, comfort him, Fiona thought, inside her head. But she didn’t dare say it out loud.

  “They will help us,” Eliza said.

  “Who will help us, Eliza?” He sounded so afraid, so timid.

  Fiona turned to the others, her face white as a sheet. “They’re talking about us,” she breathed.

  “How can we possibly help them?” Samuel added, gazing at his friend. Their faces were lit only by the gleam of the flashlight.

  Charles was running his hand over the rough surface of the blank wall in front of them.

  “We helped last time,” he murmured softly. “Perhaps it’s time to do it again.”

  The other two stared at him, aware of the implications of what he was saying. Once again, they had found themselves involved in something beyond their understanding. And perhaps beyond their control.

  Trapped in Time

  “I must get an electrician to fix this problem,” Chris Morton was complaining, as she pressed the switch on and off.

  “What is it?” Granny asked her. “Lights gone again? I tell you, this house has a mind of its own, so it does. I’ll warrant the wiring’s dodgy.”

  “I could get Jim to take a look at it,” Chris suggested hopefully. That would be one less thing to worry about, if he could fix the problem.

  “I wouldn’t bank on it, if I were you, Mrs Morton,” Granny said in a sour voice. “Wiring’s not his thing.”

  “Oh well, I’ll get someone else then. At some point,” Chris Morton murmured vaguely. “Oh look … it’s back on again,” she added in surprise, as the kitchen light decided of its own accord to switch on after all, flooding the dim room with light.

  “That’s better,” Granny Hughes declared. “I can see better to cook now. Just as well. I don’t want to end up putting one of the pets in the pot.”

  “Granny, really,” Chris Morton said, and chuckled slightly. “I don’t think Fiona would forgive you if you did.”

  “She should keep that rabbit in its cage then, so she should.”

  Chris Morton whisked the said rabbit into its cage, just to be on the safe side and moved it away into another room.

  “Fiona?” she called. “Come and see to this rabbit, will you?”

  “Yes, Mum. Just coming,” a distant voice called from upstairs.

  “What are they up to now, I wonder?” Chris Morton said.

  “Goodness knows,” Granny added, in her dour tones. “I wouldn’t like to hazard a guess. You’d have thought they’d have wanted to go out in the snow … get the sledges out … or their skis. It’s certainly deep enough.”

  Sebastian stood alone in the empty library, waiting for the others to reappear. He felt really foolish, not to mention sheepish. He should have listened to his brother’s anxieties the night before. Guiltily, he recalled how Charles had stood in his doorway, long after they should have been asleep, claiming he’d heard voices through the wall. It had all sounded so ludicrous at the time. And now here they were … finding hidden passages and stairways leading into unknown and unseen depths of the house, almost as if there were two worlds contained within the one. He wished he hadn’t been so dismissive of Charles last night. It had created tension between the two brothers, unsurprisingly. Sebastian had effectively accused him of lying or, at the very least, of imagining things, as if he were deranged or untrustworthy. He wondered how he could make it up to him.

  He could hear noises coming from the hole in the fireplace. The others were returning.

  “How did you get on?” Sebastian said, as they emerged from the hole in the back of the fireplace.

  “We got so far, then …” Charles began.

  “A dead end,” Fiona finished for him. “But we heard the voices Charles talked about. We could hear them
clearly on the other side. They were talking about us.”

  Sebastian looked surprised and shuffled his feet awkwardly. “I guess I owe you an apology,” he muttered, without looking at his brother. Charles shrugged. There was a small silence while everyone took this on board.

  “What were you supposed to do, anyway?” Charles conceded. “It did sound a bit weird, I suppose.”

  “A bit?” Sebastian couldn’t help exclaiming. “This is getting seriously creepy,” he added.

  “I know … isn’t it amazing?” Fiona cried.

  “That’s one word for it,” he said, not sounding quite so convinced as his sister.

  “Anyway, Mum’s calling me,” Fiona said. “I’d better go.”

  “Yeah … and we’ve got to tell her about this passageway. It’s so cool!”

  “My mum’ll love this too,” said Samuel.

  They tidied up the library a bit, then all rushed downstairs to tell Mrs Morton and Isabel about their discovery.

  Meanwhile, in a hidden unseen part of the house, Eliza Morton sat surrounded by dust and debris. There was grey powder on the boards all about her, which hadn’t been disturbed in years. Across the floor were scattered some broken toys. Ruined books spilled from a damp bookcase and a fat spider scuttled over the mottled pages. It was a dank, gloomy place, which no light had penetrated in years. No child should have had to remain here for long. But these two children had.

  Eliza looked across at her little brother.

  He sniffed sadly to himself, wiping a thin, bony wrist across his face.

  Eliza had no patience with him. Finally, growing bored, she moved towards the wall and drifted through the cracks to the other side.

  Her brother looked up to see her vanish. “Eliza, come back,” he wailed. “You must not go to the other side.”

  But she could no longer hear him. He was all alone in the silent shadowy “other place” that no sane person would ever want to visit.

  Mrs Morton and Isabel were shocked to learn that the children had been probing about again, into matters that were best left undisturbed. Granny Hughes certainly didn’t like the sound of it at all and said the children had no business to be meddling. Isabel was a bit softer in her prognosis.

  “I suppose it keeps them out of mischief …” she murmured absently, in that vague way of hers. “A bit of detective work around an old house like this! If I was their age, I’d be at it too. In fact, I think I’d find it irresistible.”

  Granny Hughes rolled her eyes, so that no one else could see. What were these women like, with their fancy ideas and their artistic leanings, she thought to herself sourly. “Lives with her head in the clouds, that one …” she muttered under her breath, but again, no one heard her … which was just as well.

  “So …” Mrs Morton sighed, getting up wearily from where she was seated at the table. “Let’s have a look at this secret entrance of yours. Just so we know what you’re talking about.”

  The adults followed the children back up the stairs, through the drawing room, and into the library at the far end … the very room Chris Morton had always feared. Now here they were, staring at another unresolved mystery, one she had never suspected. A secret staircase, hidden behind a dummy fireplace; a fireplace she had never questioned the existence of. She had always known it had been blocked, but had never understood why, until now.

  Granny Hughes had decided to remain in the kitchen. She had no desire to join in the fun and antics of the others. It was difficult enough trying to dust, clean and vacuum great draughty rooms, without finding out there were secret openings all over the place, leading to goodness knows where. No thank you. She preferred to do a bit of baking, leaving the others to their fanciful notions.

  Upstairs, Isabel, Mrs Morton and the four children stood in front of the great yawning stone fireplace … so much larger than the room really warranted, in spite of its high ceiling, although this had never occurred to any of them before now. The library was a fairly narrow room, relatively speaking.

  Isabel approached it gingerly. “So, where do you think it opens …?” she asked, peering closer.

  Fiona was there before her. “We didn’t know how we got in at first. Samuel and I were just looking and then a stone swung open at the back. We couldn’t work it out. Then Sebastian made us realize …”

  “It was an accident, really,” Sebastian added sheepishly.

  “He leant on it by mistake,” Fiona cried, excited.

  “Leant on what?” Chris Morton asked.

  “The old servants’ bell. Here! Look!” Fiona pressed the big black button set into the plaster on the side of the wall. Immediately, a grating noise was heard and a stone at the back of the fireplace began to slide sideways.

  Isabel and Mrs Morton stared and stared.

  “Fantastic, isn’t it?” Fiona cried.

  “Fantastically creepy,” Sebastian muttered.

  “How … amazing!” Isabel murmured, stepping forward and gazing into the gaping void. “It’s a wonder the tourist books don’t mention it.”

  Chris Morton was looking less thrilled by the discovery. “How could they if we didn’t even know it was here?”

  “What is it, d’you think?” Samuel asked. “What was it used for?”

  “We thought maybe a priest hole?” Fiona offered.

  In all the excitement Charles remained quiet. He was the one, after all, who had suffered the closest contact with the mysterious intruders that apparently lived in the walls of the old house. However, the Morton children had wisely made no mention of this at all … Nor of the voices they had heard and the suspicions they harboured. They were too concerned about their mother’s negative reaction to it all, and the idea that she would insist on a house move. None of them wanted that.

  Mrs Morton went to the back of the fireplace and inspected it closely. “I think you’re right … it must be a priest hole,” she decided. “I can’t think what else it would be. There were plenty of them. I just didn’t know we had one here. It’s odd though. Did you say there’s no actual room or cubby? Just this staircase?” The children nodded. “Usually if a priest wanted to be hidden, he’d have an entire little chamber to hide in, complete with candles and books, a pitcher of water, some bedding maybe and other necessities. Where does the staircase go?”

  Although she asked the question, she didn’t really want to know.

  “It just goes on and on,” Fiona said, “up through the house. We think it ends in the tower.”

  “Let’s investigate, shall we?” Isabel suggested eagerly.

  Chris Morton shuddered again. “I really don’t want to, to be honest.” The thought of all that unknown darkness, with who knew what lurking there, wasn’t something that particularly appealed to her … but she didn’t want to let the children know that.

  Isabel glanced at her friend sympathetically. “I suppose you’ve been through enough in this old house of yours,” Isabel said. “But we ought to check it out … make sure it’s safe. D’you want me to go first?”

  Mrs Morton rallied. “No, no … we’ll all go together.”

  They trooped up the secret staircase, along the pitch-black passage overhead; groping their way forward in the gloom, bumping into each other noisily and making quite a commotion. Fiona and Samuel hoped they wouldn’t come across anything significantly weird that would lead Mrs Morton and Isabel to suspect there was any reason to pack up and leave the house. Surely, with this much commotion, any ghosts lurking here would have made themselves scarce long before, chased away by all the noise.

  “Ouch!”

  “Was that someone’s foot?” Mrs Morton apologized.

  “Yes, mine,” Charles offered grimly.

  “Can you just mind where you’re putting your elbow, Samuel,” Isabel grumbled.

  “Honestly, you grown-ups are so noisy,” Fiona laughed. “We were much quieter on our own.”

  “Well, it’s not easy …” Isabel breathed, labouring along. “We’re not as youn
g as you lot.”

  “Or as brave,” Fiona added.

  “That’s a matter of opinion,” Isabel said.

  “If we’re less brave,” Chris Morton qualified from the back of the line, “it’s because we know more.”

  Finally, after much bickering and stumbling, they got to the end of the dreary passageway, and the adults rapped on the hollow-sounding bit of the wall.

  “D’you know what I think?” Mrs Morton said, shining the flashlight at the brick wall before them. “I think Charles’s bedroom is behind here, and this is maybe an old entrance to it.”

  “But why? And what for?” Charles asked.

  His mother shrugged. “No idea, but all of this is making me uneasy. Let’s get back downstairs. I need some fresh air.”

  Night Wanderings

  After the discovery of the secret staircase, everyone felt a little nervous at Dunadd. Fiona sat in her room, on her four-poster bed and stared out of the window at the impenetrable dark. The power had failed again – it did this almost every night now – and a few candles glimmered on her mantelpiece.

  “You be careful of those,” Granny had warned. “They’re dangerous. Don’t want this place going up like a torch.”

  Her mother, Chris Morton, didn’t like the idea of them all having candles in their own bedrooms, but what else could they do?

  Fiona glanced towards the window again to see if it was snowing, but let out a small gasp. A face was staring back at her through the window.

  After the initial jolt of shock, she gathered her wits about her. It’s your own reflection, silly, she told herself sternly. Bravely she stood up, walked towards the window and made as if to wipe the glass. Her fingers froze on impact and she pulled them away automatically. It was not her own face she could see hovering there … she was sure of it. It was that of another … a little girl, grave and pale. She gazed at Fiona for a long painful moment with sad, grey eyes. Fiona was too frightened to scream … or to call for help.

  She stood still and watched the image fade as if it had never been there at all. Outside it had begun to snow again, gentle flakes drifting down through the ebony sky.