SAM LAY IN HIS BED, the idea of sleep an alien concept in light of the day that had been. The atmosphere of everyday life had attained an unreal quality after the events of the day.
Neither he, nor Hilly had said anything to their father of what had happened, it seemed such a natural thing for the young to have secrets from those much older than themselves. But secrets of this magnitude have power-enough to eat their keeper’s away to nothing – unless their burden is lessened by the act of sharing.
But he couldn’t, to do so would betray a trust, and besides, who would believe him?
He pulled his pillow up around his face – trying to block out the world. It was still woven with the scent of Lucy; he could smell her hair, and her skin, and the fragrance she wore, the exact same scent that clouded his face whenever she held him. It was comforting, and reminded him why it was he needed to harbour everything he saw that day.
He sat up in bed, frustrated at being unable to sleep.
He turned to his bedside table, switched on the lamp, and grabbed a book that Hilly had handed to him after they got back to the cottage.
She’d marked a page with a torn-off slip of paper, apparently prompted by something she’d overheard Lucy say after she’d come to.
The book was extremely old: well-worn, weighty, and heavily laden with centuries of ingrained dust. All makings had been worn off the outer cover, but it seemed to be a book about witchcraft, the occult and demonology and, for whatever reason, their father had it in his bookcase.
It had that odour old tomes attain with age: musty, earthy, a subtle oakiness wafting into the air when the pages were turned.
As a lover of books, Sam found the smell comforting in its woody familiarity, he would even say homely, if it wasn’t for the disquieting nature of the subject matter.
He wormed a finger between the pages next to Hilly’s bookmark. It fell open in the middle of a section that appeared to chronicle all of the known demons of the world.
He was faced with a crude, block-print image of one in particular – ‘Asmodeus’, an apparent prince of the underworld. A Judaeo-Islamic demon of lust and wrath.
Sam found the image grotesque, depicting a crowned entity with three heads: one decidedly impish in appearance and the easiest to relate to, one of a bull and one of a ram, sprouting from its hunched, almost skeletal shoulders.
In the diagram, the demon was shown riding aback a dragon-like creature, and the more he studied it, the more he realised this had to be what Lucy said she saw in the library.
But it seemed too incredible to believe, but was it truly anymore incredible than what he, himself, had seen that day?
He grabbed his mobile from the side table and photographed the page, then took another, zoomed in on the block-print picture.
He opened the images, clicked on Lucy’s name, and hit [SEND], tagging the post:
Is this what you saw?
He studied the page again as he waited for a reply, trying to imagine how it would feel to come face to face with something so surreal and terrifying…
A deep hum emitted from his phone, and he tapped Lucy’s thumbnail:
Yes. That’s definitely it. Hilly showed it to me earlier after you’d left the cottage. That is exactly what I saw.
The phone vibrated again:
Me and Mum are going to see Grandma tomorrow, I’ve got a feeling she must know things, things about the house. Don’t ask me why I know, I just have a feeling. There’s things she’s said to me in the past that meant nothing then, but that now make perfect sense. Almost like she was trying to warn me.
She’s lived in Hobswyke Hall her whole life, so she has to have seen something!
I’m going to try and talk to her, but only if I can get her alone.
Please keep away from the house while I’m away, for me!
Try to sleep. Luce X
Sam shut the book and slipped it under the bed. He opened his phone again:
Don’t worry, I’ll stay away. Goodnight, Luce. Sam X
PS Let me know if you find out anything.
He placed the phone on the bed, rolled onto his side, and wrapped his face in Lucy’s scent again… After an hour, exhausted by the events of the day, he finally managed to drift off…
*
The morning sky hung bright and inviting, the air alive with the smells of summer.
Lucy and her mother made their way along the Gloucestershire roads to Furnhurst Gardens Retirement Home for their weekly visit to Lucy’s grandmother.
Furnhurst Gardens was a care home for the extremely elderly and decidedly wealthy. Her grandmother moved there some nine years ago, a decision she’d made herself. After having led a life of ‘doing’, she now yearned for the relative simplicity of care-home life.
The approach to the grounds was predominantly made through twisting country lanes, single-track roads lined with trees and ancient blackthorn hedgerows that occasionally broke, revealing intermittent vistas of undulating landscape. Flashes of a vibrant sea of green, peppered with islands of yellow rapeseed swaying in the summer breeze, receded into the haze of a sun-warmed horizon.
Lucy peered through the window into the blur of the passing landscape. She had no idea how she was going to broach the subject of Hobswyke with her grandmother, or even how she was even to wrangle getting time alone with her away from her mother?
How was she even to start such a conversation? ‘Hi, Nan, how are you? Did that problem with your leg clear up? Oh good. Here, I’ve got you some chocolates, your favourites. Oh yeah! Isn’t the big house bizarre, what’s going on with that then? By the way, Sam walked down the illustrated wall into and through the water and found what seems to be another realm of existence. Weird or what!’
‘You’re quiet today, love, everything okay?’ her mother asked, sounding concerned that Lucy wasn’t her usual chatterbox self.
‘Hm? Oh, yeah. I’m fine. Just thinking.’
‘A penny for them…’
‘Oh, nothing really, just stuff,’ she replied, smiling wide to waylay her mother’s concerns.
Lucy spied a row of shops ahead that they’d planned to stop off at along the way to get some bits and pieces for their visit.
She turned a furtive eye to look to her mother. She seemed lost in her thoughts and distracted, and drove straight past.
Lucy said nothing, allowing them to miss the stop. She was now in possession of a plan to get the time she needed alone with the old lady.
*
‘Here we are,’ her mother chirped, turning through the gates of the retirement home.
Lucy smiled. The grounds at Furnhurst were picturesque, colourful and well-tended, and she always enjoyed their visits, even this one, despite the task she’d set herself…
‘Hellooo, Helen. Hi, Lucy,’ sang the woman behind reception, ‘lovely day.’
‘Isn’t it,’ Helen replied. ‘Might take Mum for a bit of a stroll, if she feels up to it? How’s she been, do you know?’
‘Oh, you know – cheeky, a bit saucy, with patches of naughtiness blowing in from the south, giving way in the late afternoons to spells of forgetfulness and mildly daft… And that’s the forecast for the weather in Violet Claybourne today.’
Lucy and Helen laughed as they made their way down the corridor. ‘She’s way too funny to be a receptionist,’ whispered Helen.
‘I know what you mean.’ Lucy smirked. ‘What a waste, having to deal with all these crumblies… I suppose I’m just glad she’s able to laugh about it.’
‘Crumblies!’ Helen sniggered. ‘You’ll be a crumbly yourself someone day… Blimey, “Crumblies”, the respect of the modern juvenile.’
Lucy giggled. She thought it funny to dip her toe into the realm of disrespect on occasion – but of course, with no actual intention behind it…
They both turned through the door of suite No. 14 – it was already open.
‘Hi, Granny,’ warbled Lucy, trotting across and bowing to deposit a kiss on her grandmother’s cheek. The old lady’s skin had that deep, doughy softness that only comes with ninety-five years of living.
She was sitting in a high-backed chair, observing the passage of time through the window. Lucy squatted to bring their eyes level, her grandmother turning a smile to Lucy’s happy face.
‘Hello, Lucy, my love. It’s lovely to see you both,’ she said in a voice as brittle as fine bone china, stroking her hand against Lucy’s cheek.
Lucy could feel the crinkle of her parchment skin against her face. ‘You get more beautiful with every passing day. Doesn’t she, Helen?’
Helen placed a kiss on top of her mother’s head, and gave her arm an affectionate rub… ‘Hi, Mum… Yes, she does.’
Lucy stood and manoeuvred a couple of chairs into a crescent circling the main attraction. They both took a seat.
‘So, tell me how you’ve been? I see they’ve finish that work on the east wing,’ said Helen – more as a social pleasantry than anything, considering they talked on the phone most days.
‘I think they have. The builders weren’t here on Friday. Anyway, I’m fine, thank you. Actually, I’m very well. But I don’t want to talk about me, I want to find out what my Lucy’s been up to. I hear you’ve finished school? And that you think you did well in your exams?’
‘Yep, finished last week. So I’ve decided, I’m going to shamelessly lord it up as some sort of lady of leisure for a bit. Live a carefree existence, until I get bored, then I’ll work out what I’m going to do next. You get the general idea.’
Violet smiled. ‘Tell me what you did yesterday? That was your first day off, right? It was such a lovely day. Very clement.’
‘Oh, I didn’t do much. I just walked around the grounds mainly, that’s all, nothing too earth-shatteringly exciting. Oh, I saw Sam and Hilly, they send their love by the way.’
‘Aah, that’s nice. They’re such lovely kids,’ she said, fondly reminiscent.
Lucy turned her eyes slightly towards her mother. ‘I, erm, I also went up to take a look at the Hall, you know, because I’ve not seen Hobswyke for a while, what with being so busy.’
Her mother flinched, and turned a look to Lucy. Violet couldn’t help but notice the disquiet passing between them.
‘And how is the old place?’ the lady asked, watching for a reaction.
‘I told her, she needs to keep away from the house, Mum,’ Helen interjected. ‘I explained to her why, and that it’s dangerous.’
Violet’s face turned to amazement. She looked shocked. ‘You told her?’ she said, her voice ringing with disbelief. ‘You mean, you told Lucy everything?’
‘No! I mean. No… I-I explained to her that it needs renovating, and that until the work’s been done, it’s not safe to go up there.’ Helen flashed steely eyes towards her mother. ‘She just needs to keep away. I don’t want her going up there. Okay?’ Helen looked sternly into her mother again. ‘Can we just change the subject please?’
Lucy’s mouth hung open, They do know something, she thought to herself, both of them do.
Lucy turned to her grandmother, and was shocked to find her already looking back at her with a most peculiar look in her eyes.
The old lady’s lower lids flexed, as though trying to work out what Lucy may, or may not know. Time to put her plan into effect.
‘Oh bloody hell, Mum! The shop. We forgot to go to the shop.’ Lucy whined, unleashing her best attempt at acting surprised.
‘Oh crap! I totally forgot,’ Helen said. She sagged theatrically, and peered down at her watch. ‘I’ll go now. There’s no traffic.’
‘Oh you don’t need to bother,’ Violet said.
Lucy snapped stern eyes towards her grandmother, giving a subtle shake of her head.
The old lady’s lids pinched. ‘Oh – well, actually, if you could, love. I am running a bit low on things,’ she said, changing her tune. ‘I do hate to be any trouble though.’
The old lady glanced towards Lucy, and winked.
Helen took up her purse and car keys from her bag. ‘It’s no trouble, Mum. You stay here with your nan, I’ll be back in a short while, okay?’
‘Okay, Mum. See you soon,’ Lucy replied, watching as she hurried from the room.
She kept her eyes locked on the door as she listened to her mother’s footsteps recede into the distance, listening until she could no longer hear them.
‘So, what is you want to know, young lady?’ asked Violet – the question jarring Lucy back into the room. ‘Is it the house? It is, isn’t it?’ she said, fishing for information. She rolled in her seat knowingly. ‘It is the house, I can tell.’ The old woman breathed a disgruntled sigh. ‘That damned place, is it misbehaving again?’ she asked.
Her grandmother’s words shocked Lucy. Not only could this old woman read that something was troubling her, but also decipher what it was. Lucy realised her grandmother was not the prisoner to her age people often assumed she was.
‘Yes. It’s the house,’ Lucy replied, in a semi-whispered voice. ‘What is it I don’t know, Nan…? What is wrong with that place? There’s something isn’t there?’
Violet loosed a sigh, then nodded reluctantly. ‘Yes, there is something,’ she replied, wishing her answer could be different.
Her grandmother turned to look out of the window, her stare – distant. ‘I’m ninety-five years old now, Lucy, and I sometimes think, if I died without telling you everything, chances are, no one else ever would… So maybe, this is the time? Maybe you’re ready?’
Lucy watched intently as her grandmother gazed far away at nothing, sunlight fluorescing the faded colours of her irises, the whites of her eyes stained yellow with age.
Violet turned her attention back to her granddaughter, seeing how hungry she was for information.
She adjusted herself in the seat to get comfortable, ready to tell her tale…
‘During the war – the second one that is – many of the larger houses like Hobswyke, ones that lay predominantly in the countryside, away from the bomb-attracting lights of the cities, were converted into homes for refugee children, children that lived in cities that were in danger of being bombed, to live in relative safety until the war was over… And Hobswyke Hall was one of them.’
Violet motioned to Lucy to close the door, preferring to keep her words private.
Lucy walked across and shut it, and took to her seat again. She leaned in on her elbows.
‘Now where was I? Oh yes. So, Hobswyke Hall had children come from aaaall over the country to live in it. The dining room was converted into a sort of dormitory. Filled with dozens of makeshift beds, for dozens of makeshift upbringings.’ She smiled. ‘I was a child myself then of course, so you can imagine all of the new friends I made, all the children I had to play with. They were fun times, in many ways.’
Lucy stood, and moved to the small kitchen area to make tea. ‘Carry on, Nan, I’m listening.’
‘Well of course, in time, the war ended, and the children were free to go back to their proper homes.’ She looked up at Lucy. ‘But not all of the children could leave.’
‘Why?’ asked Lucy.
A sadness moistened the old lady’s eyes. ‘You see, some of the children weren’t so lucky, their parents didn’t survive the fight, or the scream of the nightly bombings. Many of the children had no other family, no other place to go, so they remained at Hobswyke Hall. Lost, homeless, and without families to love them, or raise them.’
‘That’s awful,’ whimpered Lucy – sadness swelling her heart.
‘Yes,’ Violet whispered, looking towards the floor. She smirked, dismissively. ‘The glories of war…’ she mocked.
Lucy handed her grandmother a cup of tea, sat, and wrapped herself around her mug.
‘Anyway,’ Violet continued, ‘after the war, Hobswyke Hall became, or maybe it would be more accurate to say remained, an orphanage. And it stayed an orphanage for the next thirty years.’
Lucy looked on, utterly engrossed, wondering why she’d never been told any of this before.
Her grandmother continued. ‘Of course, the years rolled past; I grew older, and the house was passed to me by your great-grandparents when they eventually both died… So, I continued to run the children’s home that I’d inherited the way it had always been.’
The old woman fell silent, receding into her memories, visibly toying with how open to be. ‘Lucy… Do you know, or, did your mother ever tell you, that she was adopted?’
Lucy’s eyes widened. ‘No… No I didn’t. She didn’t,’ she responded – shocked that she was only now just finding out.
‘Oh… Well. I wasn’t sure if she had or not.’ She took a regretful sip of her tea. ‘Well… Now you know, I can’t take that back,’ she said, flashing a weak smile towards Lucy. ‘Your mother arrived at Hobswyke as an unwanted child… Her own mother – from what we understood – used to drink, and take drugs, and apparently had little interest in raising a child, so…’
Violet looked across at Lucy and smirked. ‘I’m surprised you hadn’t guessed, what with you two possessing those incredible cerulean eyes, and mine all muddy-brown. Not to mention you being two of the most beautiful girls to have ever graced this earth, and me with this battered old excuse for a face.’
Lucy allowed herself a laugh. ‘You’re beautiful, Nan. Stop it.’
Violet laughed back. ‘Well, that’s very kind of you, dear. You may have the most gorgeous eyes, but they obviously don’t work very well.’ They both share a giggle, helping break the tension.
Violet took a moment to finish her tea… ‘How long will your mother be?’
‘A while yet, Nan, the shops are quite far away.’
‘Okay. That’s good.’
Lucy took their mugs, and walked to the sink to wash them. ‘Carry on, Nan, I’m still listening.’
‘Well – your mother – she was the most beautiful little girl you’ve ever laid your eyes on, like you were. It seemed incredible to us to think that anybody could fail to care for such a lovely little child.’ She shook her head at the outrage… ‘Anyway, she soon befriended a little boy called Thomas, another orphan.’ She laughed to herself. ‘Now, these two were inseparable – Gemini – and you would always see them around, holding hands, wandering here, wandering there – you’d have thought they were glued to each other.’ Violet let go a sigh laced with sadness… ‘Then one day, they both went missing. They just vanished. Disappeared without a trace.’
‘Missing?’ said Lucy. ‘What do you mean, “missing”?’
‘They’d just gone, both of them.’ The old woman flashed her brows. ‘Of course, the police were called in, searches instigated, rivers and canals dragged, but nothing. No one ever found anything. They had simply vanished.’
Lucy’s mouth hung agape. ‘So, what happened?’
Violet turned away, sitting in her own, sad silence for well over a minute. Then eventually turned back to face Lucy, a tear in her eye. ‘I don’t know, and I wish I did, but I still have no idea where those kids went.’
‘But – my mum, she’s here now?’ Lucy said, confused.
‘Yes, she is. Thank the Lord.’
‘So… How?’
Violet stared down into her lap, unsure of how to go about describing to Lucy a series of events that to this day, she herself still didn’t understand. She’d rehearsed this conversation a thousand times, but it wasn’t making anything any easier.
‘Please, Nan… Please try,’ implored Lucy.
The old lady exhaled a resigned sigh, and gathered her thoughts. ‘The children were never found, nor any clues as to where they’d gone. And of course, no one was under suspicion of foul play – as they call it now – but no orphanage can survive an event like that, kids going missing, creates as much scandal as it does gossip. So of course, Hobswyke, “the orphanage”, had to close down.’ She looked towards the window. ‘The remaining kids were homed, or moved to different orphanages, and Hobswyke Hall – after all those years – became a house again.’
Lucy ached to hear the details of how her mother came to return, but she didn’t want to push her grandmother too hard. But she couldn’t help but push a little. ‘And my mum?’ she asked. ‘How, did—’
‘How did she return? Well, that is still a mystery. Ten years past, the whole ordeal by then just a bad memory, like a forgotten nightmare. Until…’
‘Until what?’
‘Well… We – your granddad and me, who I’d married shortly after the closure – we had both decided to renovate the dining room, it having been left as a dormitory for all that time, and we wanted to restore it to the way it used to be, put it back to the way it was before the war. Anyway, we’d taken a large mirror down from above the fireplace, and laid it flat in the centre of the floor to try and keep it safe while we worked on the wooden panelling around the perimeter.’
The old lady leaned a clandestine gate towards her granddaughter. ‘Then one night, we both heard an almighty crash from downstairs? We thought it must be burglars or something. But that’s not what it was at all.’
Lucy listened expectantly. ‘…Well? What was it?’
‘We scouted around the whole house, trying to find what had made such a God-almighty noise. And when we finally looked in the dining hall, there, sitting in the middle of the mirror, among a thousand shards of glass, was a young girl.’
‘A young girl? How young?’
‘About your age.’
‘…And who was she?’
‘I didn’t know. She looked so lost, so frightened. She had cuts to her hands and legs. And when I went to help her, she looked up at me…’
‘And…?’
‘And, I found myself looking into the most lost, confused, beautiful turquoise eyes I’d ever seen, and instantly, I recognised her. It was Helen – your mother, the girl who’d been missing for over a decade.’
Lucy looked on in shock, listening to a story so fantastic she wouldn’t have believed it — if it wasn’t for the knowledge she already possessed.
Her grandmother continued, ‘And do you want to know the weirdest part?’
‘Yes,’ Lucy whispered.
‘The young girl – your mother – was with child. She was pregnant… Pregnant with you.’
Lucy rocked back on her seat, then stood to pace the room. Sitting still, hearing such incredible revelations about her own life had grown far too intense for her to cope.
‘But that’s not all,’ her grandmother added, ‘when we were clearing up the broken glass, we found shards of mirror with bevelled edges. But the mirror that lay on the floor had been fitted with plain glass? And to this day, I have no idea where those other shards came from?’
Lucy paced the room, trying to calm herself, then sat opposite her grandmother again.
‘Anyway, we still had your mother’s papers on file at the hall, and with surprisingly little trouble, we managed to adopt her. Thing is, your grandfather and I were unable to have children ourselves. So we almost saw it as a kind of blessing, you might even say a miracle.’
‘But, where did Mum say she had—’
‘Had been? She didn’t, she couldn’t remember a thing. None of it. She has a huge chunk of her life with no memory. Even to this day, she remembers nothing… If you ever ask her a question about her younger years, she makes up the answer.’
‘And Thomas?’
‘No – nothing. Thomas is just another forgotten child to add to the list – a statistic. Your mother only has fleeting memories of him now as a little boy.’
Lucy rose again and paced the room, trying to digest all she’d been told.
She turned with resolve back to her grandmother. ‘Nan… Yesterday, me and Sam discovered something up at the house, something really kind of frightening. And I’m not even sure how to describe it.’
The old lady twisted in her seat to face her. ‘Try Lucy. What is it you found, tell me?’ she insisted, face racked with concern.
‘We found – well, Sam found, something in one of the pools. The pools by the stone staircase. It was a—’
‘I’m back!’ warbled Helen, bursting through the door with armfuls of shopping, the silence shattered by the crashing door, and the crisp rustle of carrier bags colliding with eager knees.
‘Sorry I was gone so long, they’ve set up road works along the main road since we arrived, can you believe it, we’ve only been here a short time? Anyway, I’ve got you some nice things, Mum, some bits for you to nibble on.’
Lucy and her grandmother smiled up at Helen, feigning a look of pleased to see you back.
They both glanced towards each other and exchanged a knowing nod, a non-verbal agreement to keep all that had passed between them a secret – at least for now…