I didn’t sleep that night. I sat by the foot of my bed until it was light outside. My eyes drifted between my notepad, the open curtains and the hair band on my pillow until I was nearly blind from the tears streaming down my numb cheeks. I could make no sense of anything. Exhausted, I eventually lay down and pulled the bed cover over myself. I lay at the tail end of the bed. I couldn’t bring myself to rest my head on the pillow. The pillow was where they had placed my hair band. Whoever ‘they’ were.
As the night slowly gave way to the morning, I listened to the sound of the party guests downstairs. I could hear their suitcases thudding down the stairs, and their cars pulling away outside as they left. I waited until gone noon before I finally went downstairs. That way I could be sure that all the guests had left and it would just be my aunt, Toby and Nell left in the house. Still wearing the clothes I’d worn the day before, I walked down the winding stairs. I could hear the sound of a vacuum cleaner whirring away in one of the guest bedrooms, and in the cold light of day the staircase looked like it belonged in a different world from the night before. The spot where I’d found my notepad didn’t look sinister, and when I looked up towards the bright sunshine streaming through the glass-domed ceiling, and drew my gaze to the third-floor landing, nothing seemed strange or in any way frightening.
Nell was in the kitchen. ‘Coffee?’ she asked, fiddling with the machine. ‘You look like you could use some.’
‘No,’ I said. The last thing I wanted was the rank taste and heady rush of caffeine running through me. I still felt bruised from the night before, I needed something comforting. ‘Got any hot chocolate?’ I suddenly remembered that the last time I’d seen Nell I’d told her never to speak to me again. I looked down at the floor, feeling stupid; my teenage outburst felt so trivial compared to what had happened to me in the hours afterwards.
‘One hot chocolate coming right up.’ Nell smiled. I sat down at the table and rubbed at my tired eyes as Nell pottered about. Every noise she made was like an assault to my senses – the boiling kettle, the tinkering of a teaspoon – I just wanted to thump my fists on the kitchen table and beg for silence.
Nell put the mug of hot chocolate down in front of me wordlessly, much to my relief. She sat down opposite me and began to shuffle a deck of cards she had pulled from her pocket. I watched as she spread the cards out in front of her, touching them with great care, a look of absolute concentration on her face.
They were tarot cards. Even I could see that. I’d never seen a deck of tarot cards before but I knew what they looked like. The death card, the lovers, the magicians, the two of swords and cups. ‘You can read tarot cards?’ I asked her.
She nodded. ‘The guests love it.’
I waited for her to offer to read my cards, but she didn’t even look up at me. Whatever she was seeing in the cards must have been far more interesting. I watched on silently as she patiently lay out the cards in a formation on the kitchen table. She carefully lay them on top of each other, touching each one almost lovingly and taking a moment to study it before she moved on to the next. I wondered if there was any truth to them, and what they might be telling her. I absently started picking at the skin around my nails, my eyes glazing over as the cards blurred into a puzzle of shapes and colours.
‘Trouble sleeping?’ Nell said without looking at me. ‘I find it difficult to sleep during storms too. My mother used to say I was a sailor in a past life, died at sea in a storm. Even as a baby I couldn’t bear the sound of thunder, that’s obviously why.’
‘Obviously,’ I said dryly.
She smiled warmly at me and looked back down at her cards. It dawned on me that someone like Nell must be used to people thinking she’s crazy. It clearly didn’t bother her. I wished I could be like that. Our school chaplain used to preach to us in his sermons, saying that everyone we meet in life has been put there by God to teach us something. If that’s true then maybe Nell’s lesson for me is not to care what people think.
‘What’s on your mind?’ she asked, once again without looking up.
‘You mean you can’t see that in the cards?’ I snorted. Nell said nothing, and I immediately felt like a bitch for being such a predictable teenager. ‘Sorry,’ I mumbled apologetically. ‘I’m just tired.’ Nell looked up and smiled. ‘Will you read the cards for me?’ I asked before I could stop myself.
Nell hurriedly scooped up the cards from the table and began to shuffle them in her hands once again. ‘Do you know what you’re asking me, Suzy? Tarot cards are powerful things, they’re not a game.’
‘You don’t need to treat me like a party guest,’ I said, annoyed. ‘I’m big enough to know what I’m asking. But if you’re too scared of my aunt …’
‘Your aunt?’ Nell snorted. ‘No, Suzy, Meredith doesn’t worry me. Unlocking flood gates do, though.’ As the mental image of gushing floodgates swept through my mind I realised that I didn’t care. I’ve always been attracted to fire, I’ve always wanted to walk on the wild side. Ouija boards, seances, tarot cards – they might be a gateway to darkness, but they’re also part of who I am. There was nothing Nell could say to deter me once I had my mind fixed on something. And my mind was fixed on having my tarot cards read.
‘I’d like you to read for me,’ I said with certainty. ‘Please.’
‘Very well.’ She sighed and sat back thoughtfully. ‘What do you want to ask them?’ As if the cards were a sentient entity unto themselves.
The answer to Nell’s question came as simply and as suddenly as a dream. ‘I want to ask if I’ll ever be happy.’
Nell frowned and then nodded in understanding and passed me the cards. ‘Shuffle them and then fan them out on the table, face down.’ I did as she instructed.
The back of the cards had a symmetrical pattern of the moon at its various stages against a midnight-blue background. ‘I want you to repeat the question over and over in your mind and then pull out three cards.’
‘Any cards?’ I asked.
She nodded. ‘The three cards that are pulling you towards them.’
Will I ever be happy? Will I ever be happy? I repeated in my mind, over and over. As I repeated the question and stared at the cards, I let my focus drift so the deck blurred into one. Slowly, I reached out and tugged on the corner of three cards, one from either end and one from the middle.
Nell pulled out the three cards I had touched and flipped them over. She pointed to a card with the Roman numeral VII and a picture of a golden chariot ridden by a woman with flames in her hair. ‘This card represents the road you have walked.’ Next she pointed to a card of an older man with a flowing grey beard; in one hand he held a golden chalice, in the other a silver spear. ‘This card is the path you stand on now. And this card is the road that lies ahead.’ The final card had an image of a plain, ashen-faced girl standing alone in a field, grey standing-stones surrounding her – like the ones you see at Stonehenge. ‘Together the three cards give you an answer to your question.’
‘So what’s the answer?’ I asked, leaning forwards. ‘What do they mean?’
‘This first card, The Chariot, tells me that in the past you’ve had to summon a great strength from inside yourself, one that you previously did not know you had. You have been driven by fear, but have overcome that fear. And yet your fear still haunts you, it’s still a driving force for you now. And where you stand now is represented by this card here.’ She tapped the central card. ‘The Magician is a place of great strength. You sometimes find it difficult to understand that you are in control, Suzy. You have the power to transform old situations. You must use that energy buried deep inside yourself to evolve, you must focus your will. And if you can do that, then the path ahead for you is a very interesting one. You’re very special, Suzy. That much is obvious to anyone, and it’s here for me now in the cards you have selected. This card here –’ she pointed to the card with the girl on it, the card that represented my future – ‘is The Daughter of Stones. This is what we tarot readers refer to as a Minor Arcana card. The Daughter of Stones represents great energy, sacred energy. Energy harvested through rituals and visions.’ My heart gave a sudden jolt at the words she used. ‘Rituals’, ‘visions’ – it made me think of Ouija boards, seances, candles and chanting, the very things that had brought about my ‘visions’ at school. Visions I’m not sure I wanted to ever have again. ‘You must use your strength to take responsibility for a power greater than yourself,’ Nell said, her eyes burning with intensity as she looked straight at me.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked, hearing my voice catch in my throat. ‘What power greater than myself?’
‘You have great love and courage and inner beauty, Suzy. But you also have an ability to see the world in a way that others can’t. This is both a great gift and a great burden. You’re walking a path that is very special, but also very lonely. It’s a path that most people cannot follow you down. You must learn to be very strong if you are to survive the road ahead. I’d say …’ She paused and stared at me for a beat. ‘… I’d say that you already know what lies ahead. You know what your visions mean. Being a visionary will stand you apart from others, but that is not something that should be feared.’
‘A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world,’ I whispered. ‘Oscar Wilde said that. Maybe that’s me, someone who must find their way by moonlight.’ I blinked the glaze from my eyes and looked up to see Nell smiling at me fondly. ‘Who owned this house before my aunt’s husband?’ I had no idea where the question came from – I’d never really thought about it before – but as soon as the words were out of my mouth, the answer suddenly seemed important.
Nell stared me straight in the eye and said, ‘After the Dudley family fell into debt and sold off the house in the 1800s it became a school. A school for orphaned young ladies run by a charity. The school closed in the 1950s and the building stood empty for decades after that. The charitable trust that once ran the school still owned the building, and your uncle Richard bought it from them.’
‘Why did the school close?’
Nell shrugged. ‘I guess there weren’t enough orphaned young girls in the country to keep it going.’
‘Seems sad,’ I said quietly, ‘for a building to stand empty for so long. How do you know so much about the house?’
‘My sister and I grew up in the village; in fact, our mother was one of the girls who went to Dudley Hall School. She used to hate us coming up here as children and playing in the grounds. She used to tell us that a building can hold more than just dust and furniture.’
My heart rate spiked at Nell’s words. No one knew that to be true as much as me – sometimes there was so much more to buildings than what we could see. There were stories and darkness and spirits that lingered and haunted. ‘What did she mean?’ I asked in a whisper. ‘What’s here?’
‘Bad memories. Mum didn’t like to talk about the years she spent here. It’s hard to imagine this place as a school, isn’t it? Your room would have once been a dormitory with four or five girls in it.’
The reminder that the house had once been a school and that my bedroom had once been a dormitory made me feel sick. The walls of Dudley Hall had witnessed stories and lives that I could never know about. Ghosts that were somehow still trapped here.
‘Nate’s been asking after you,’ Nell said, looking back down at the cards. I looked at her blankly, suddenly forgetting who Nate was and why he would ask about me. ‘My nephew,’ she reminded me.
‘Of course,’ I muttered, remembering exactly who Nate was and the fact that he thought I was some kind of lunatic.
Nell smiled. ‘I told him you’re fine, and keeping yourself busy doing lots of writing. He gets so bored during the college holidays,’ she said without me asking how he was. ‘His mum’s got him working hard around the house to try and keep him busy. I feel sorry for him if truth be told. Dudley-on-Water is a lousy place to be a teenager, nothing to do here. Meredith did wonder if the two of you might become friends, but I guess you can lead a horse to water …’
‘I’m sure Nate can make his own friends,’ I muttered. ‘He doesn’t need me.’
‘You should come over for dinner some time,’ she said.
‘You live with him?’ I asked, surprised.
‘And my sister, his mother. They moved in with me when Nate’s father left them.’
I hadn’t given Nate’s family much thought. I’d tried not to think about Nate at all since my run-in with him in the village over a week ago. I knew Nell was his aunt but I hadn’t even wondered about his mother and father. ‘Does Nate have any brothers and sisters?’
Nell shook her head. ‘No, it’s just him. So will you come then, to dinner?’
The thought of sitting around a dinner table with Nate, the boy who’d called me ‘mental’, was the last thing I wanted to do. He’d made assumptions about me and he didn’t even know me. But then again, maybe I’d done the same to him. Both times I’d met him he’d seemed arrogant and rude, but I’d never really given much thought as to why he might have been like that. Maybe I should give him another chance.
‘Dinner might be nice, thank you,’ I smiled.
‘Tomorrow night?’
‘Okay.’
I watched as Nell scooped up the cards on the kitchen table and began to shuffle them again. ‘Is it true what Toby said,’ I asked curiously. ‘That you never go upstairs?’
‘I told you before,’ she replied. ‘Toby is many things but he’s not a liar. It’s Katie up there now cleaning the guest rooms. I like to stay down here.’
As I opened my mouth to ask more Aunt Meredith walked into the kitchen. ‘Suzy, can I have a quick word with you?’ She approached me and paused as she came close, looking at me with a mixture of anger and worry. ‘You all right, Suzy? You look like you haven’t slept. Have you eaten yet?’
‘I didn’t sleep,’ I admitted. ‘And no, I’ve not eaten yet.’
‘Well, that won’t fill you up.’ She nodded at the hot chocolate in my hands. ‘Let me fix you some food and then you can go back to bed and try to snooze for a couple of hours.’
I watched as she opened the fridge and started to pull out bacon, eggs and milk. ‘What did you want to talk to me about?’ I asked.
‘One of the guests said a red-haired girl came charging into the library in the early hours of the morning and interrupted a private party.’
‘If by “private party” you mean “scandalous liaison” between two guests, then yes I suppose I did interrupt them.’
‘What were you doing stalking around the house in the small hours?’
‘I just told you, I couldn’t sleep last night.’ I winced at the memory of barging into the library in the hope of finding an explanation for my misplaced notepad.
‘Well, next time you feel like a midnight adventure please try not to involve the guests. And if you must talk to them then please make sure you do so in costume.’
I nodded and turned away from Aunt Meredith, aware of Nell’s eyes on me as I shuffled my feet about on the floor awkwardly.
After a cooked breakfast I went back upstairs. I showered and crawled into bed, too tired to bother with the pretence of closing the curtains. I knew I’d only find them open when I woke up. As I lay there I thought about what Nell had told me, about the house once being a school and a building holding more than just dust and furniture. I wondered if that was why she wouldn’t venture upstairs. Maybe she knew something about how Dudley Hall wasn’t quite right. Whatever presence I could feel in the house – the cold breath on my cheek, the crying in the attic, the ghostly girl who walked in the moonlight – maybe she felt it too. As I drifted off to sleep with the afternoon sun shining through my bedroom window, I wondered what would be worse – to be mad, or for this to be real.