LUCY THREADED HER ARM through the matrix of cobwebs that time had knitted around the keys. Silently, she wrapped her repulsed fingers around the cluster of cold metal. They felt waxy and damp to the touch.
She snapped her grip firmly downwards, the moisture-rotted string popping with barely any perceivable resistance. ‘What was that?’ Peter asked, hoping it not be a sprung leak.
‘Hm? Oh, it was nothing, I erm, I just banged my head, that’s all,’ replied Lucy.
‘Are you okay?’
‘Yeeah fine,’ she assured him, with a dismissive air, trying to act the way she would if she actually had banged her head. Her fingers tightened around the discovered secret.
Lucy rose from the dank stench of the cabinet, her eyes taking a moment to readjust to the relative brightness of the kitchen. ‘Nope, nothing. All good, Mr F,’ she proclaimed, her fist resting on her hip, enveloping her discovery. ‘So, tea,’ she barked. ‘I’ll just pop out and see if Mum wants one, too.’
Lucy trotted out into the hallway towards the front door, stopping briefly to drop her find furtively into her small, trendy leather rucksack hanging from the coat hooks, making sure they made no sound as they landed, announcing to the world their existence.
She stepped out into the sunlight to receive a grateful, ‘Yes please,’ from the thirsty pruner – elated at the unexpected offer of an Earl Grey with milk and one sugar…
After gifting mugs to welcoming hands, Lucy checked herself in the hallway mirror, then slipped her slender arms through the straps of her rucksack.
She exited back out into the warmth of the sunshine. ‘How’s your tea?’ she chirped, as she strode energetically past the busy gardener.
‘Mmm, lovely thank you, sweetheart,’ came the reply, with a twee shrug and a smile. ‘Where are you off to?’
Lucy turned to walk backwards down the bank. ‘Me? I’m just going to see Sam, just to say hi.’
‘Okaaaay,’ her mother replied. Lucy could hear the tone of suspicion in her voice.
‘I’ll see you later,’ she smiled, spinning back to face the front.
Helen watched from her elevated vantage point. ‘Remember what I said,’ she warned, her voice muted by the flutter of the summer breeze and the increasing distance.
Lucy glanced back up the bank, finding the sight of her mother watching from atop the ladder more than a little disconcerted. ‘Don’t worry,’ she replied, forcing a carefree tone to avert her mother’s obvious growing suspicions.
Lucy took the right-hand fork at the bottom of the bank, and continued along the sun-dappled lanes towards the Fletcher’s lakeside cottage.
She felt happy in the knowledge that Peter would probably be helping her mother tie back the roses for most of the afternoon, feeling that the fewer adult eyes there were circulating the grounds at that moment in time, the better.
She strode down the lane on the final approach to the cottage, exiting the trees that umbrellaed the pathway. As she emerged from beneath the low-hanging canopy, she saw Sam across the way carrying boxes out to the recycling bin by the garage.
‘Sam!’ she called. He spun like a top, trying to pinpoint what direction his name drifted in from.
‘Sam!’ she cried again, laughing. A few pirouettes later, he eventually turned to face the path.
‘Hey. Hiya,’ he chimed, the vision in yellow considerably brightening his day. A most welcome distraction from his bin filling duties.
Lucy crossed the parking area to join him. He ambled across to meet her.
‘How’s Hilly doing now?’ she asked, as she neared him, darting a look up to the house.
Sam’s shoulders lifted. ‘Well, she seems okay, I guess.’ He flicked a look up to her bedroom window. ‘She’s upstairs, doing one of her crosswords, you know how she loves words, so she can’t be that bad. I think she’s finally coming to the realisation she imagined it all.’
Lucy fronted him, peering intensely into his face. ‘Did she?’ she queried, seeming to question the natural assumption.
Sam’s eyes pinched with suspicion at Lucy’s real-world baulking suggestion. ‘What do you mean, “did she”?’
Lucy popped a shrug in response. ‘What if she did see a hand?’
Sam laughed. Lucy didn’t. He stopped. ‘What? You mean, you actually think she saw a hand?’
Lucy shrugged at him again.
‘Do you know how mad that sounds? “Fingers rising out of the pool”.’
‘Maybe,’ she replied, with a subtly defensive air. ‘Anyway, whatever, I’m going to go back up to the house again, to take a good look around.’
The reaction on Sam’s face did nothing to hide the fact that he too, had become increasingly wary of that old building. ‘How are you going to get in?’ he asked, ‘your mum’ll go mental if you break a window.’
Lucy crimped a mischievous lip between her teeth, flashed her brows, and tugged a few times on her rucksack straps. The keys rattled their existence from within the hollow of the bag.
Sam’s whole face brightened to the sound. ‘You found them!’
She nodded her excitement. ‘Under the sink, looped on an old piece of string. They’d been tied right up behind the pipework. A reeeally normal place to keep keys, wouldn’t you say?’ she mocked – a sarcastic tone woven purposefully into her voice. ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Why not just put them in a draw like anyone else?’
Sam failed to extricate an answer that wouldn’t shore up Lucy’s suspicions.
Old memories continued to birth in Lucy’s mind. Sam could see her thinking. He tilted his head to align his face with hers, inviting her to share her thoughts.
‘I can just about remember, right before we moved,’ she said, pensively, ‘my mum, and your dad, had just started working on one of the larger rooms. It was the library I think?’ She frowned. ‘If I’m remembering right, the idea was to redecorate it, or-or restore it, or something along those lines?’
Lucy swung her gaze clear of the distraction of Sam’s fascinated face, to aid dragging her memories to the fore.
‘Anyway,’ she continued, ‘it didn’t really occur to me at the time, I mean, I must’ve only been about Hilly’s age, or younger even? But one day – for whatever reason – we suddenly all just left? Like – really quickly, without warning, just like that.’
She turned back to Sam, her palms presented to the sky, inviting an opinion he didn’t yet have. ‘We suddenly abandoned the place, with absolutely no explanation whatsoever as to the reason why, and Mum’s never ever given me a good explanation?’ She loosed a sigh. ‘And then, as you know, we both moved into the gatehouse.’ She flexed the fingers of her upturned hands and shrugged. ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘For what possible reason…?’
Lucy’s words began sparking retrospective memories in Sam’s own mind, of changes that he’d noticed in his father’s mood around the same time. ‘Did you want me to come with you?’ he offered.
‘Noooo! It’s okay. I’m not risking getting you into trouble too, not yet anyway,’ she joked. ‘But later on maybe, another time, I’d be more than happy to drop you right in the shit.’
They both laughed, but Sam was having to work hard to hide his growing concerns. ‘But hang on?’ he interjected. ‘Why would it get us in trouble? You did used to live there.’
‘Well,’ she said, loosing a dismissive snort, working a gossipy tone into her voice, ‘that’s the other thing.’ She leaned forwards into a clandestine huddle. ‘I told Mum that I’d been up to see the house, to look around – you know. And when I did, she went really weird on me.’
‘What do you mean, “really weird”?’ he asked, squinting his curiosity.
‘Well, I dunno? At first, she kind of went all quiet, and then she asked me if I “saw anything”? “Saw anything”? Well, I saw the house? But that’s not what she meant, I could tell by the way she asked. But it’s not exactly what you’d call a normal question now is it?’
‘No. I guess not,’ Sam responded, trying in vain to think of any other way to interpret such a conversation.
‘So… I’ve found the keys, I’ve got the keys, and I’m going to go over there right now to take a look around. I’ll try and find out for myself, what it was that forced us to leave that place, and so urgently.’
She started walking backwards away from Sam’s contemplations, ‘I’ll see you later, okay.’ She flashed her brows and crimped a smile, then turned to start back up the lane. ‘I’ll let you know what I find,’ she called over her shoulder, as she made her way back up the bank.
‘Lucy!’ Sam barked – unable to disguise the concern from his voice.
‘Don’t worry,’ she fired back in response, ‘I can take care of myself… I am nearly eighteen you know.’
Sam’s hunting gaze tracked Lucy as she snaked her way up the lane. How thoroughly alone she looked, and how utterly vulnerable.
Intermittent flashes of yellow peeked through the thickening woodlands as she receded into the distance… It felt wrong for Sam to not be there to protect her.
Sam had also, at times, sensed something festering within the bricks and mortar of that old manor house, and he now found himself regretting his pretence that he hadn’t…
Lucy arrived back at the fork at the top of the rise, slowing to a stealthy creep.
She leaned out from behind the trees and glanced up the bank towards the gatehouse, checking the coast was clear of anything resembling a parent. But she couldn’t see anyone, so she took her chance, and quickly darted across the clearing…
She made her way with forced resolve towards her old home, focusing her attention on the complexity of the early summer birdsong drifting in from every tree, helping to distract her mind from the fact that her levels of unease seemed to be rising exponentially with every stride she advanced nearer to Hobswyke. She suddenly felt very alone.
She eventually arrived at the end of the path. Once again, having to negotiate her way through the latticework of contorted branches that seemed to be scheming to impede her progress.
‘Why the hell didn’t you go the other way?’ she grumbled, scolding her own lack of foresight.
Eventually, she ducked back out onto the gravelled clearing, but this time, she wasn’t checking for snags or rogue leaves, her face was firmly locked on the stones and mortar of the gothic monstrosity attempting to intimidate her arrival.
For the second time in a day, Lucy was confronted with the manor house that the passage of time seemed to be conspiring to alienate from her memories.
She endeavoured to face it down, to be dominant in a staring match between her and the gloom-laden frontage peering down at the tiny figure standing before it.
She was conscious of an overwhelming aura of threat that its morose architecture seemed to emit, taking a deep, shaky breath in attempt to clear the sick-inducing quiver that had manifested in the pit of her stomach.
How she wished Sam was next to her, holding her hand, sharing the fear, doubling the ardour.
She regretted, in wanting to appear strong, that she’d inadvertently given voice to a very real weakness she all too often harboured, namely, an inability to ask for help when she truly needed, or wanted it.
It was something she erroneously felt displayed fragility in her nature. A negative impact that she considered her attempts to practice feminism had had on the way she interacted with the world.
Eventually though, she managed to steel herself sufficiently to carry on, and started with rekindled determination – however fake it may have been – towards the heavy, oak doors that guarded whatever secrets lay beyond them.
She locked a blinkered gaze on the entrance, attempting to ignore the pools flanking the stone staircase as she slowly climbed the steps. She feared catching a glimpse of contorted fingers rising from the inky blackness of the stagnating fluid, however alien that concept may have been within the real world she was desperately trying to remain planted.
She reached the top of the steps and exhaled; she’d arrived.
She crossed the stone-flagged landing to the tall, dominating, oak-panelled doors, coated in treacle-thick layers of black, heavily crazed paint.
Two stone columns stood guard majestically either side, drawing Lucy’s eyes up to an ornate lunette that crowned the entire entranceway, its concave, vista-like surface painted with depictions of frolicking cherubs lording over all who passed beneath.
As she drank in the details of the vivid artwork, she began to notice each winged child had what looked to be a horned, demonic version of itself peeking from behind each and every one. It was yet another detail that had managed to escape her younger self, and one that sent a slow-dripping shudder sliding down her spine.
She swung her rucksack to the front to retrieve the keys. She started to thumb through the cluster. So many, she thought, wondering what secrets each one might unlock. But standing out like a white rose in a bed of nettles, was one key that looked pompous and majestic enough to be charged with the task of unlocking such an imposing door as the one she faced, so she swung it clear of the rest, and carefully slid it into the lock… It fitted.
Lucy had to use both hands and the majority of her strength to rotate the large, ornate key, its sister mechanism having sat idle, unfriended by oil or use for over half a decade.
The tumblers finally broke their bonds, and announced Lucy’s presence with a deep, hollow, metallic clank, amplified by the entire door.
She pushed, but nothing gave.
She stepped back to scan the heavy oak slab for any other locks, but could see none.
She dropped the keys back into her bag, slipped it on, and leant her whole bodyweight hard against the door again, and with a few determined thrusts, it finally crackled open, the bonds of inactivity relenting to her persistence.
The dry hinges cracked as the door swung open, presenting the interior like parting curtains unveil a stage. But in this particular play, Lucy was a cast member that had yet to read the script.