Shiver Page 6

  Fiona tried to breathe some life back into her frozen fingers. Why was the glass so cold?

  The face at the window had vanished, but could she trust her own senses? What had she really just seen?

  Turning back, she realized that she could see her own reflection there now, dimly picked out by the candlelight.

  Perhaps that was it, she mused. Perhaps it was just my reflection, distorted by the cold.

  But Fiona suspected in her hearts of hearts that that wasn’t true; that a child’s face had appeared to her, staring through the glass.

  She stood up and drew the wooden shutters hastily against the night. As she sat on the edge of her bed again, Fiona felt a sudden need to speak to Samuel. She glanced at the clock above her mantelpiece. It was half past ten at night … too late to be wandering next door to the cottage to wake them up. But she couldn’t resist it. She had to.

  Throwing her wardrobe door open, she grabbed a jumper and trousers and pulled them on. She crept down the eerie staircase to the floor below. It was so dark. She pressed one or two light switches hopefully but knew they wouldn’t respond.

  By the time she had arrived in the kitchen, her eyes had adjusted to the gloom, but she was beginning to have second thoughts. What had she really seen out there? And what if it was still lurking outside?

  How could a face be floating outside my bedroom window? She shook her head.

  I don’t care, she thought. I have to talk to Samuel.

  She took a coat from the peg and pulled on a pair of boots. The heavy outer door squealed on its hinges as she pulled it open.

  Although it was cold inside the house, it was even colder outside. There was a silence out on the moor that only snow could bring. Fiona recognized that feeling well. It happened every winter up on Sheriffmuir, and every winter it was quite magical and breathtakingly beautiful.

  Tonight, however, it held an eerie possibility.

  The fresh fall of snow had eliminated all footprints from the courtyard. No one had walked this way since the families had gone to their respective houses that evening.

  She stepped out onto the virgin snow and made her own set of prints to the cottage next door. She didn’t go to the kitchen door, as she was afraid to disturb Isabel, but crept instead under the bare plum trees to Samuel’s bedroom window in the corner. She stood in the flowerbed and tapped on the glass. No response.

  She tried again.

  Behind her she heard a noise and spun round quickly, almost stumbling over in her panic.

  It was Lucy, one of the dogs, who had followed her outside into the darkness.

  “Lucy,” she whispered. “You gave me a fright.”

  She patted the dog on the head and then turned back to the window to try again. She let out a scream loud enough to wake the dead.

  The curtains had been pulled back and Samuel’s face was staring out at her through the glass. He mouthed words of alarm at her, but she couldn’t hear him.

  He opened the window with difficulty and tried to push the snow off the ledge so it didn’t fall into his room.

  “What the …?”

  “What d’you think you’re doing, scaring me like that?” Fiona screeched.

  “Me? Scaring you?”

  She held a hand to her pounding heart. “As if I’ve not had enough to deal with already,” she murmured, half to herself.

  He shook his head. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but who is the one tapping on my window in the middle of the night?”

  “It’s not the middle of the night,” she barked. “It’s quarter to eleven, actually.”

  “Oh, well, that’s alright then,” he said sarcastically. He looked at her and the dog Lucy standing patiently behind her.

  “What do you want anyway?”

  “To talk to you.”

  “Well are you going to stand there all night or are you going to come in?”

  “Course not. Let me in.”

  “Come to the back door,” he told her, then banged the window shut and disappeared from view.

  After a few seconds, the red-painted wooden door clicked open and Fiona was ushered quickly into the kitchen. Lucy followed her hopefully.

  “Don’t leave dirty prints,” Fiona told the dog, urging her to sit beneath the table on the stone flags.

  “It’s freezing in here,” she added, looking about her at the dark kitchen.

  “It’s freezing everywhere. Now what do you want?”

  “Well that’s friendly. I told you. I need to talk to you.”

  “What about?”

  They stared at each other in the gloom and Samuel lit a candle on the table.

  “What’s happened now?” he persisted.

  Fiona looked at him, and considered how best to put it. Samuel was watching her closely.

  “You’ve seen something, haven’t you?”

  Fiona nodded. “I think so, but then again maybe I didn’t.”

  Samuel waited for her to elaborate.

  “You won’t believe me if I tell you.”

  “Try me.”

  “I saw her,” Fiona said simply. “Through the window …”

  She glanced at Samuel’s face and changed her mind. “It might well have been my own reflection. I suppose … that’s possible, isn’t it? But …”

  Samuel nodded thoughtfully. “Of course it’s possible. But it wasn’t your own reflection, was it?” he said quietly.

  She shook her head. “No, I don’t think so.”

  Both of them were silent for a moment, staring at the flame of the candle between them.

  “What did she look like?” Samuel asked. “Was she like Charles said?”

  “She was young.”

  “Younger than us?”

  “Probably. I’m not sure.”

  “What was she like?”

  Fiona shrugged. “A bit like me, I suppose, only much smaller … very thin … and her hair was darker.”

  They stared at each other for a while, then Samuel continued.

  “We need to talk to the others about this in the morning. If your mum gets wind of this …” Samuel began, “If she even begins to suspect that strange things are happening here again, she’ll throw a wobbly and threaten to move. You know she will. We have to do something.”

  Fiona thought about it for a moment. Were there more ghosts to worry about? More stories left untold? She shifted in her chair, clicking her fingers for Lucy to come out from under the table.

  “I guess it’s time I was getting back. We can talk about it properly in the morning.”

  She glanced towards the closed kitchen door fearfully. She didn’t fancy having to go out into the dark again. Who knew what might be lurking out there? But she was too ashamed to admit that she might be scared.

  “D’you want me to come with you?” Samuel offered.

  “Don’t be daft,” Fiona cried, with false heartiness. “What good would that do? You’d only have to come back again … in your pyjamas,” she added. “It’s freezing out there.”

  “You’ll be fine,” Samuel reassured her.

  “Thanks … that’s reassuring,” she muttered sarcastically. “Think of me while you’re back in your warm bed and I’m facing who knows what outside!”

  “You’ve got Lucy with you,” he protested. She grunted.

  “S’pose so. See you later.”

  Samuel stood on the doorstep and watched Fiona walk across the courtyard towards the big house. “Bye then,” he called out, partly to encourage her. “See you in the morning.”

  She turned and waved, before vanishing beneath the archway, towards her own house.

  The cold crept around his feet and he shivered inside his slippers and dressing gown. He waited a moment or two, listening to the silence, then closed the door of the cottage.

  A while later, Fiona had almost succeeded in falling asleep, when Lucy suddenly stood up. Fiona heard her claws clicking against the wooden floorboards. The dog stood near the half-open door, ears flattened, body t
ense and began to release a low threatening growl.

  “What is it, Lucy? What is it, girl?”

  But the dog remained where she was, refusing to budge.

  Fiona crept out of bed, taking a few tentative steps towards the door, her heart pounding.

  The dog never moved from her position.

  Fiona knew that the corridor outside would be pitch-black. She’d be able to see nothing.

  Fearfully, she put her hand on the door knob, and pulled the door open a fraction, her heart hammering in her chest like a drum.

  A light was glimmering in the dark deserted corridor.

  Fiona stared.

  The girl stared back, a candle held high in one hand.

  “Hello!”

  Her face was pale and gleaming.

  Fiona screamed, slammed the door shut and ran back to her bed. She stayed there, shivering, watching the pool of light under the crack of the door. Lucy had started to bark.

  Suddenly there was a flurry of footsteps and the light vanished abruptly. The door burst open and Chris Morton appeared, looking ruffled and dishevelled.

  “What is it?”

  “Mum,” Fiona cried, clutching at her mother in a way she hadn’t done for years.

  “What on earth is it? A nightmare?”

  “Yes, yes, that was it.”

  Despite her terror, Fiona was even more determined to keep quiet about what she’d just seen. She made a huge effort to pull herself together.

  She’d talk to the others in the morning, maybe, but they mustn’t let their mother know what was happening … otherwise she’d sell up and leave. And they couldn’t let that happen.

  “I’m fine, Mum. It was just a silly nightmare. It must have been that cheese sandwich I had before bed. They’re supposed to give you weird dreams. I guess I gave Lucy a fright too.”

  Chris Morton shook her head. “D’you want Lucy to stay in here for the night?”

  “I don’t mind,” Fiona murmured, trying to play it down.

  “Well, if you’re sure …”

  “I’m fine now, honestly.”

  “Go to sleep then,” Chris Morton instructed her and closed the bedroom door behind her.

  All was quiet in the house. A little girl with ice-cold hands paused at the head of the staircase and peered down. She had been bored for many a long year, but now life was just beginning to get interesting again.

  Outside it was snowing. She remembered how that used to look, when the trees were glittering and leaning under the weight of it. Everything would turn to glass as it slowly froze under the blue light of the moon. Winters were so much colder back then.

  She heard someone approaching on the staircase. Chris Morton was climbing the stairs back to her room, after fetching a hot drink from the kitchen.

  The little girl leant over the banister and watched in silence.

  Chris Morton pressed a light switch and the first-floor landing glowed with artificial light. The little girl melted away. The older woman was talking to herself, while the girl listened, invisible as air.

  “Thank goodness. The power’s back on.”

  The upstairs corridor was bathed in light. This annoyed the little girl. She preferred the shadows. She lifted her nightrobe and swept in silence.

  The electric lights were evenly spaced along the walls, brown glass globes that each gave off a soft light. The light switch controlled all six of them; they were not independent of each other.

  On impulse she decided to play a little game. As Chris Morton walked along the upstairs corridor, Eliza made the lights go out behind her … one by one. Chris Morton turned and stared. She was a brave woman: she was unafraid of the dark, or of loneliness, otherwise she would not have lived here, in so isolated a place.

  The lights continued to go out behind her, until at last she was left in total darkness, with the light switch nowhere in reach. She glanced behind her. The corridor was one long tunnel of darkness. Her rational side told her that the wiring in this house was decidedly peculiar and needed looking at … but her imagination could feel a presence at the end of the corridor … someone watching her. Don’t be ridiculous, she told herself. There’s no one there. Just another power cut.

  Chris Morton appeared in her daughter’s room.

  “Fiona,” she whispered hoarsely.

  No answer.

  Something stirred under the duvet in the four-poster bed.

  Fiona sat up, looking puzzled.

  “Mum? Is that you?”

  “Just checking to see if you’re still awake,” Chris murmured, somewhat breathlessly.

  “Well, I was asleep, but …”

  “I’ve brought you a hot drink. The electricity came back on for a moment and then went off in a rather strange way.” She told Fiona what had happened. “Must be the wiring,” she finished. “I keep meaning to get it checked. Anyway …” She placed a steaming mug on the bedside table and patted her daughter’s arm. “Night then.”

  “Night.”

  Reluctantly Chris Morton closed the door behind her and ventured out onto the dark landing. She returned to her own room telling herself that nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

  The Other Side

  The next morning the children got together to discuss Fiona’s nocturnal sighting of Eliza, and what it meant.

  “I knew there was something wrong with Lucy,” Fiona explained to the others. “She just wouldn’t settle. Then I saw this light under the door, in the corridor outside. I opened it and there she was … just standing looking at me, with a lighted candle in her hand. That’s when I screamed and Mum came.”

  “D’you think she suspects anything?”

  “Mum, you mean? I don’t think so,” Fiona said. “I told her it was a bad dream … but she’s not stupid. She might put two and two together.”

  “It’s very important that we don’t let on about Eliza and all this other weird stuff that’s been happening,” Charles told the others. “We don’t want Mum freaking out and deciding that it’s time to move.”

  “She’d never move, surely?” Samuel cried. “You’ve been here too long … your family, I mean.”

  Charles and Sebastian looked doubtful. “She has bad memories about the place, though. She didn’t move here until she got married. She might be glad of an excuse to leave,” Sebastian murmured.

  “We can’t let that happen,” Fiona cut in.

  “At least the power’s back on,” Samuel said, flicking a light switch on and off, just for the pleasure of it.

  “I hope our days here aren’t numbered,” Charles added forlornly.

  “Are you kidding?” Sebastian said. “Dodgy wiring, secret staircases, mouldy passageways, ghosts in the walls … who’d want to stay?”

  “We do,” Charles and Fiona said at the same time, without meaning to.

  On the other side, the ghost girl drifted … free at last. She left her brother behind in the dismal room, crying his heart out, crying for the past … and for their mother.

  There was no point in doing that, Eliza knew. Their destiny, their future, lay with the children who had found the secret staircase.

  She sailed through the air, passing through walls and panelling as easily as water flowing through a pipe. The boy Charles’s bedroom was empty. There was no one there this time. Oh well, she thought, and drifted on.

  She liked the freedom, but longed for some solidity to her body. She was having some fun now, discovering what she was capable of. She hadn’t meant to smash things in Isabel’s studio; she had had a fright on realizing that she had strayed from the house unwittingly and had been in a rush to get back. But the vase had been deliberate … and highly successful in making her presence felt.

  She hadn’t meant to scare anyone. She had just wanted to see what she could do with the lights. But tonight she seemed to have succeeded in scaring both Fiona and her mother.

  The passing of time was nothing to Eliza; it either went very quickly, like a speed train passing th
rough a tunnel, or so slowly that nothing at all seemed to move, and even the journey of one tiny mouse across a carpet could turn into a mammoth adventure, lasting for what appeared to be days. As the sun rose above the snowy moor, casting a reddish glow over everything, Eliza barely noticed the breaking of day. She was travelling through the house, on an expedition of her own.

  The grandfather clock chimed in the empty hallway, striking away the hours. Eliza recognized some of the paintings on the wall from her own lifetime. She sometimes heard faint echoes from a past that no living being could possibly hear.

  Her little brother was too afraid to accompany her. He didn’t like to be on the other side. He preferred to remain in the shadows, trapped in time. But Eliza wanted more than that. They had woken from their slumber, after four hundred years of restless sleeping. Only once before had they been woken from their slumber, when Catherine Morton had slept in the tower as a child. She used to hear them sometimes, through the walls. But they had never before managed to drift to the other side. Until now.

  Now that Eliza had spoken with the boy Charles, she felt sure that things would be different.

  Despite the snow, Granny and Mr Hughes had still managed to get home each night and back to Dunadd the next day, although they had nearly given up this morning, as the roads were getting increasingly worse. Not much defeated Granny, however, not even the wildest snowstorm or severest blizzard.

  A cruel light glimmered on the moor outside. It was freezing, turning pockets of land blue and transforming the branches into ice features. Eliza floated, shivering. “So beautiful,” she murmured to herself, gazing out at the purest white landscape. “So beautiful.”

  Downstairs, she hovered in the hallway, hanging back in the shadows. She could hear voices coming from the direction of the kitchen. Fiona was discussing something with her mother and the old woman, Granny Hughes. Something about a pet rabbit.

  Eliza watched, her sad dark eyes gleaming.

  That girl has a mother, Eliza thought. A mother who cares for her and worries about her. And what have we? It had been so long since Eliza had known what real life was like. Her thoughts became too painful. She did not like to think about her own mother.