The rest of that first weekend passed by in a blur. I stayed out of everyone’s way as they fussed over the guests and the murderer was finally revealed. Turns out it was Lady Charlotte Cavendish who murdered me – she discovered I’d been having an affair with her husband. But even finding out who dunnit couldn’t bring me out of myself. On the Sunday morning I watched from the second-floor landing balcony as the guests wheeled their suitcases down the stairs, hugged each other and said goodbye. I thought I’d be glad that the guests had gone, glad that I could finally explore the library and roam around without having to wear a silly costume. But once the house was empty of guests I just felt numb. I spent the rest of the weekend sleeping and walking around in a daze. Nothing Aunt Meredith could say to me made me feel any less alone.
The days began to slip by and soon a whole week had passed. Frankie called me every day for that first week. Every day I made an excuse not to speak to her. I had no idea how she’d managed to get hold of my phone number. I hadn’t given it to her – Mum must have. Traitor. It’s not that I didn’t love Frankie. She’s the best friend I’d ever had. But Frankie reminded me of school and of the ghosts that I so desperately needed to lay to rest. Every morning I pulled the duvet cover over my head, burying myself away, pretending I was asleep so I didn’t have to face Frankie when she called. And every day after breakfast I took myself off deep into Dudley Hall’s grounds. I either sat beneath the weeping willow by the brook or in the boathouse where I knew Aunt Meredith wouldn’t look for me when the phone rang. I didn’t check my email or Facebook accounts. I hadn’t turned my mobile on in months. Frankie had no way of reaching me. Sooner or later she’d stop trying.
Every morning I woke up in my stark white room to find my bedroom curtains wide open, even though I knew I closed them the night before. I stopped asking the others if they had come into my room and opened the curtains. They always said no. I didn’t want to press the matter and give them a reason to think me insane and send me back to Warren House. So day by day I spoke less and less to Aunt Meredith, Toby and Nell. I threw myself into writing my screenplay.
I picked up where I had left off with the characters I’d been trying to create in my mind. Only now those characters had a story, and the story had a title: The Ghost of Dudley Hall. The story was set at the time that Dudley Hall was a school, and it followed a group of girls who’d seen a ghost haunt the school corridors at night. Only no one knew who this ghost had once been, and why it refused to leave their boarding school. Each day as my pen hit the paper, I hoped I could escape my own reality and live between the pages of the story I was creating. I hoped that if I created a ghost story on the page then I’d somehow escape a similar story in my real life.
Breakfast time was always the same and I was gradually getting used to the taste of coffee in the morning. I sipped my straight black coffee and listened quietly as Toby told me facts about spies, and Nell would make jokes about my red hair as she cooked up batches of food, freezing it ahead of the weekend guests. Aunt Meredith was the only one who seemed to really notice my quiet mood. I’d often catch her staring at me thoughtfully, and then she’d smile and ask me if I were okay. Every time I answered her I kept my words to a minimum and tried to convince her that I was fine, I didn’t need fussing over.
During the day Toby would follow me around and pretend to spy on me. I nearly died of fright when I saw a small brown box peep through the boathouse door one day. I leapt up and swung the door open to find my cousin crouched down and peering into the end of the box. ‘What are you doing?’ I asked.
‘It’s my periscope,’ he explained, handing it to me to inspect. ‘I made it myself.’
The boathouse was my favourite place to write. I hadn’t left the grounds once since my run-in with Nate. There had been the briefest of moments whilst I was speaking to him where I almost thought that we could be friends. Ask no questions, get no answers – that’s what we both seemed to want from each other. But I couldn’t help but wonder again what Nate might possibly have to hide; obviously he felt the same way about me as it hadn’t stopped him from asking. There was no way we could be friends – I didn’t need that kind of complication in my life. I convinced myself I’d be happy to never see him again. He probably thought I was insane and I hated the fact that I cared. It was easier to pretend he didn’t exist than entertain the thought of explaining myself and apologising to him.
Friday came around soon enough, and a new batch of murder mystery guests was due to arrive in the afternoon. The sun shone down on Dudley Hall all morning, and I sat outside beneath the old weeping willow tree on the side of the stream as I wrote The Ghost of Dudley Hall. I found it hard to concentrate on my story that morning; I was easily distracted by the sunlight bouncing off the water, the smell of the flowing brook and the reflections in the stream. I stared for what felt like hours at the weeping willow’s leaves as they swayed in the water, collecting the weeds and rotten petals that carried on the stream. I daydreamed about Ophelia from Hamlet, who’d drowned herself in a river, and the Lady of Shalott who had died as she floated downstream. Whether I was staring at the stream and daydreaming, or writing down the words of a ghost story on a page, my mind kept bringing me back to thoughts of death.
The sun began to sink in the sky, it was getting colder and I knew that the guests would soon be arriving. I pressed my palm against the willow’s tree trunk to steady myself as I stood up, and felt deep grooves in the wood beneath my fingertips. I moved my hand and looked at the tree bark. There was a scar on the side of the tree; it had been covered by moss but was still partially visible. I picked off the moss to reveal deep etchings into the tree trunk. It was a five-pointed star – a pentagram – with five letters around it, one at each of the points: A, M, S, L and T. I stroked the carving thoughtfully, wondering what it meant and who had put it there.
The wind blew and a shiver gripped hold of me. It was time to go inside, get warm and prepare for the evening ahead. I heard the first of the guests’ cars pull up into the gravel driveway as I came in through the kitchen door. I quickly rushed upstairs to my room to shower and change before anyone could catch me in my regular clothes. That weekend’s theme was the swinging sixties. Aunt Meredith had let me read through the premise of the party the night before. A sixties rock star, Graham McGroove, had invited a bunch of artists, models and musicians to spend the weekend at his country pad. But an aspiring model – once again to be played by me – is murdered on the first night of their stay. I had a black and white miniskirt and a black polo-neck vest to wear. I smiled as I looked at myself in the mirror – it was certainly an improvement on the scullery-maid costume.
I left my bedroom and made my way to the grand, winding staircase. Something stopped me suddenly, a noise coming from the floor above. It sounded like muffled crying. I was sure Aunt Meredith had told me that the attic floor hadn’t yet been renovated, and that guests weren’t allowed up there. But I could definitely hear someone – it sounded like a child. ‘Toby?’ I called out. There was no answer. I moved to the foot of the attic staircase and looked up towards the gloomy landing above me. My foot hovered over the bottom step. Part of me was desperate to investigate, to see where the crying was coming from. But I was running late for the beginning of the party, and I didn’t have time. Turning away from the sound, I ran down the stairs towards the library.
My eyes fell on Toby as soon as I pushed the library door open. Despite the weekend’s theme he was wearing his Sherlock Holmes cape and holding his plastic pipe. He smiled broadly at me as I walked into the room, and I smiled back, although feeling uneasy as I realised the crying couldn’t have been him. Just as I’d done the Friday before, I lined up with Aunt Meredith, Nell, Toby and Katie – the part-timer who only ever showed up at weekends – in the library as Aunt Meredith welcomed the guests and introduced the staff and characters. Once again there was no one under the ancient age of thirty-five in the party. And once again during dinner I screamed a blood-curdling scream in the hallway and collapsed to my death. The guests came hurrying out and pawed over my ‘dead’ body, wondering aloud who could have killed such a pretty and promising young thing.
I made sure to get up as quickly as I could as soon as the guests had left me. I didn’t want to be alone playing dead on the cold stone floor. I hurried back to the kitchen and helped Katie clean away the dinner plates and pack away the leftover food. ‘Katie,’ I said carefully, as she passed me the last of the plates to be put away. ‘There are no guests staying on the top floor, are there?’
‘No,’ she replied, pushing her fair hair away from her face. ‘It hasn’t been renovated yet. It’s not safe up there so I wouldn’t go exploring if I were you.’
‘I thought I heard –’
‘It was the wind,’ she said quickly, before I could finish. Her face had paled and her eyes darted away from me, as if she was hiding something. ‘The wind will play tricks on you up there in the attic. Don’t go up there.’
‘I won’t,’ I replied, although I didn’t believe what I was saying.
I spent the next day avoiding the guests and keeping as far away from the house as I could. I sat in the boathouse writing for hours. The afternoon was muggy, the air desperate for a thunder storm. I wrote scene after scene, tearing each page that I’d completed from my notepad and setting it aside into its own little pile. Needing a break, I took myself back to the house and into the kitchen, my completed pages in one hand and the notepad in the other. Nell was sitting at the table; Toby was sat next to her reading his 007 book. I put my notepad on a shelf by the sink so I could use my free hand to run the tap. I gulped down a glass of cold water greedily.
‘I don’t suppose you want to help me?’ Nell said, chopping a lettuce into shreds. That annoyed me. She’d already made up her mind that I’d say no before she asked, so why bother asking at all?
‘I don’t suppose I do,’ I muttered back.
‘You know, Suzy,’ Nell said thoughtfully. ‘Sometimes you can sound very rude. You really should think before you speak.’
I nearly exploded all over the kitchen. I could have lashed out at her and torn her throat out at that moment. How dare she say such a thing to me? ‘Just because you can hear what comes out of my mouth doesn’t mean you know me,’ I said sharply. Toby looked up from his book, his little body rigid at the sound of my outburst. ‘You don’t know the thoughts in my head. You don’t know what I think and feel,’ I accused Nell.
‘All the world has to go on is what you give them, Suzy,’ Nell replied so calmly it only made me angrier. ‘You’re a girl with shocking red hair and an arsenal of Shakespeare quotes at the ready and a whole lot of attitude. It doesn’t take a genius to know that something is troubling you. I’d much rather you spoke to me about it than snap.’
‘What makes you think I’d speak to you about anything? You’re not my friend. You’re not my mother,’ I shouted. ‘You have no idea who I am or what I’ve been through in my life. I don’t care what you think of me. You or your stupid, stalker nephew. Don’t speak to me ever again!’
I stormed out of the kitchen, trying desperately not to cry. Why couldn’t Nell just keep her big mouth shut? Was I that transparent? Was it that obvious that I was walking around with a grey storm cloud over my head? I raced up the staircase to my bedroom on the second floor and slammed the door behind me. I collapsed onto the bed and sobbed into my pillow. I didn’t want to feel like this. And I didn’t want other people to notice how I was feeling. For the first time in my life I wished I was invisible, I wished I could just disappear and no one would care where I was or what had happened.
I cried and rocked myself to sleep, falling asleep on my bed without changing or showering.
When I woke it was pitch dark outside and the air was crackling with thunder. It must have been the middle of the night. No one had come in to wake me for dinner, no one had come to check that I was okay. Suddenly I regretted my wish to feel invisible; all I wanted was for someone to care.
My bedroom window swung on its hinges and specks of rain spattered through the open window. I pulled myself up and walked over, reached out for the window latch and before I knew it I was looking down towards the river. I felt my heart thud as the memory of the girl running to the river bank surged up within me. But this time there was nothing to see. No boat, no girl. Just the sloshing rain hitting the swollen river. I closed the window and drew the curtains. I pulled the hair band from my red hair, scrunched the edges of the curtains together and tied them into a knot with the hair band so they couldn’t be pulled open easily.
The travel clock on my bedside table said one a.m. The rest of the house would be sleeping, but I felt horribly awake. I’d heard a lot about writers who do their best work in the middle of the night, and I wondered if it would be the same for me. I walked over to the small desk in my room and sat down. I began to look about for my notepad when I realised I must have left it on the shelf by the kitchen sink when I was last downstairs. After arguing with Nell, picking up my notepad had slipped my mind.
Still in my clothes from the day before, I left my bedroom and went out onto the dark landing. The only light came from the waning moon glittering through the central skylight above. Rain pattered down on the glass, the droplets looking like diamonds in the moonlight. As I slowly descended the grand staircase lightning flashed through the skylight overhead, illuminating the suit of armour standing guard at the foot of the stairs. As I reached the great hall I saw that there was a light on in the library, and I could hear the drunken and muted chatter of a few of the party guests – who’d obviously stayed up drinking into the night – coming from behind the closed library door. The dim glow escaping the library was enough to light the way for me as I went through the grand entrance hall and towards the kitchen at the back of the house.
The back corridor was cloaked in blackness. I made my way into the kitchen in the darkness and quickly reached for the light as soon as I was in there. The place was pristine; Nell, Katie and Aunt Meredith had done an impeccable job of clearing up before they’d retired for the night. I walked over to the sink and looked up at the shelf where I was certain I’d left my notepad. I still couldn’t see it. I quickly checked the other shelves, the spotless surfaces, the kitchen table – it was nowhere to be seen. I did a second sweep of the room, of the shelves and surfaces, and it wasn’t there. There were no piles of clothes, papers or magazines that it could have been tidied away into. I swore under my breath and promised to really make a point of complaining to Nell and Aunt Meredith for touching my stuff. Annoyed, I turned out the light and made my way back down the dark corridor and into the dimly lit entrance hall. As I walked towards the stairs a square of white on the bottom step, next to the suit of armour, caught my eye.
My notepad.
The breath was knocked out of me as though someone had punched me in the gut.
The notepad had certainly not been there when I’d walked down the stairs only minutes before. And Aunt Meredith wouldn’t have put it there for the guests to see as they walked up and down the stairs.
Horror tickled my insides, like small insects scuttling through my veins. Someone must have known I was looking for it. They had put it there after I’d walked down the stairs. I picked up my notepad with shaking hands and clutched it to my chest. I turned around, expecting to see someone watching me in the shadows. But there was no one.
I turned sharply at the sound of murmured voices coming from the library. Without thinking, I charged towards the library door with my notepad in my hands. I pushed the heavy door back and stepped into the dimly lit room. A man and woman sat together on the old chesterfield couch. They pulled apart from one another as soon as I came into the room, as if I’d caught them doing something they shouldn’t have been. ‘Did you move my notepad?’ I blurted out.
The couple, both as old as my parents, looked at me as though I had just clawed my way out of an asylum. I repeated myself, louder this time, ‘Did you move my notepad?’
‘We didn’t touch your notepad,’ said the man, bemused.
‘Did you see anyone out in the hall a minute ago?’ I asked, suddenly realising just how crazy I sounded. ‘Did you hear anything?’
The woman shook her head and looked up at the man as he said very firmly, ‘No.’
I stood there, staring at them in silence for a few long moments before I turned and left them to whatever they had been doing before I interrupted.
I quickly ran up the stairs, moonlight still pouring through the skylight above. As I stepped out onto the second-floor landing, ready to head into my room, another square of white caught my eye. This time it was above me, on the third floor – the un-renovated attic floor where no one stayed. It looked like a swish of white material, but it was gone as quickly as I’d seen it. Determined to prove to myself that I was imagining things, I forced my legs up the next flight of rickety stairs. Soon I was standing on the third-floor landing.
It was dark, and the corridors were narrower up there, not as open and grand as they were on the floors below. It struck me that in over a week at Dudley Hall I’d never been up to the third floor. I had no idea what was up there. At the top of the stairs a corridor led off to my left, and to my right was a closed door. I assumed that behind the door was another corridor, similar or identical to the one on my left. Slowly, with my back to the closed door, I began to walk down the dark corridor to the left of the stairs. Where there should have been a door like the one behind me were rusted hinges and a splintered doorframe. The right-hand side of the corridor was lined with small glass windows, which strobed with the lightning from outside. There were three doors along the left-hand side of the corridor – all closed. I found myself walking towards the door at the far end, and it was as I was walking that I began to hear the sound of crying. Not loud, grief-fuelled wails. It was a small sound, a muffled sob. The same sound I’d heard the night before, the sound that Katie had told me was the wind. But it didn’t sound like the wind. It sounded like a child, a girl.
The noise was coming from behind me. From the landing at the top of the stairs.
I looked back and to my horror saw that the closed door on the other side of the building was no longer closed. It stood open, inviting me to walk through. The sound of the crying grew louder, and I realised that it wasn’t coming from the landing, where nothing could be seen. It was coming from the far corridor, the corridor that had sat behind a closed door only moments before.
Before I could stop myself my feet were moving towards the sound of crying. I walked past the three doors, past the rusted hinges where the corridor door should have been, and out onto the landing. The sound of thunder and rain lashed against the domed skylight, flashes of lightning illuminating the dark attic corridor.
Without thinking, I walked towards the open door. The corridor was a mirror image of the one I had just walked down. This time the three closed doors were to my right and the small windows to my left. The floorboards creaked beneath my feet and my heart beat a furious rhythm in my chest as I followed the sound of crying to the last room on the right.
As I came face to face with the door, my chest rising and falling as if I’d just run a marathon, I clutched my notepad to my chest so tightly my fingers numbed. The unmistakable sound of crying seeped through the closed door. I pressed my ear to the wood and listened. I could hear someone crying as clear as thunder. I reached for the doorknob, ready to open the door and confront an empty room, confront my madness. Part of me wanted to see an empty room. I needed to know that what was happening wasn’t real. Closing my eyes, breathing deeply to steady myself, I turned the doorknob.
It wouldn’t turn. Wouldn’t open. It was locked. I rattled the handle, wanting desperately to open the door and see whatever was behind it. But it wouldn’t budge.
A loud clap of thunder shook me and my hand flew from the door handle. The next thing I knew I was running back down the corridor, down the stairs, and along the second-floor landing. I burst into my room and shut the door behind me loudly. I pressed my back against the door and slid down it, onto the floor. I closed my eyes and focused on steadying my breathing. In, out. In, out. Breathe, breathe, breathe. It’s not real, not real. It’s all in my head, in my head. Ghosts aren’t real. She’s dead and buried. She didn’t come back.
I opened my eyes and stared at the window.
The curtains were wide open, drawn apart like they were every morning.
Shaking, I rose to my feet and walked towards the window. It was the middle of the night and someone had come into my room, taken my hair band from the curtains and drawn them apart in the darkness.
I stood at the end of my bed and gaped in horror at the open curtains. Something on my pillow caught my eye and I turned to look.
There, placed very purposefully on my pillow, where I’d slept every night since arriving at Dudley Hall, was my hair band.
The moon was strong in the sky last night so Lavinia, Sybil, Margot and I stayed up late doing the Rituals. Margot burnt her finger trying to drip wax onto our prayers to the Goddess, and Sybil had to sneak her down the hall to the washrooms so she could bathe her hand in water. ‘Honestly, they’re such schoolgirls,’ Lavinia complained. ‘If we’re ever going to summon the Goddess and make her answer our prayers it’s going to have to be you and me that do it, Annabel.’ Whilst Margot and Sybil were down the hall and Lavinia was clearing up the room I looked out of the window. That’s when I saw her again – Tilly. She was walking through the grounds with her cloak pulled over her head. The moonlight bounced off her pale skin as though she was made of diamonds. Just what is she doing out there? ‘Shut the window, Annabel,’ Lavinia moaned. ‘I’ll catch my death!’
We had Games in the rain again today. Lavinia and I were making our way outside with our hockey sticks when we saw Tilly heading towards the library. ‘Let’s follow her quickly,’ Lavinia said. We slipped into the library where Tilly was getting a heavy book out of her satchel. A few of the other girls looked up but no one said anything as Lavinia marched towards Tilly and snatched the book clean out of her hands. ‘What do we have here then?’ Lavinia said spitefully, opening up the pages of Tilly’s book. ‘The Complete Works of Tennyson. What a bore you are, Tilly. Who reads poetry for fun? Just as well you can’t come outside – we’d beat you to death with our hockey sticks if we could.’ Then Lavinia threw the book at Tilly’s face and it hit her on the nose before falling onto the table. Lavinia swished her hair as she stormed off.
Tilly scrambled about for her book and wiped the tears in her eyes. ‘Don’t cry,’ I whispered to her. ‘It’s what she wants; it’ll only make it worse.’ Then I had to leave with Lavinia so we didn’t miss Games.
We have another late night meeting for the Rituals tonight. Sybil swears that her skin is clearing up. ‘Of course it is, the Goddess is finally listening to us,’ Lavinia snorted. But I can still see Sybil’s pimples when she stands in the sunlight. I don’t think the Goddess is listening at all. But I daren’t tell that to Lavinia. I wouldn’t want her to start throwing books at my face. Mind you, at least I wouldn’t cry, I know how to handle myself with Lavinia. And at least I have other friends. Tilly doesn’t have any one.
Until I write again,
Annabel