Someone was coming towards me. I prayed it was Gracie. That she’d had seen sense and gone back for a candle after all. Any second now we’d have light again. But as the footsteps drew closer, there was no light. The dark stayed thick as anything.
‘Gracie?’ I said, then went cold all over.
It was Gracie. Wasn’t it?
The footsteps sounded different. Lighter. Quicker. All I could see was darkness. I smelled it again, that sweet honey scent, and got ready to run; upstairs, downstairs, I didn’t care where.
Someone was close.
The whispering started just inches from my ear, a hissing, lisping sound that made my scalp prickle. A hand gripped my upper arm. I shrank back in horror. Tried to pull free. But the grip was fierce. Fingernails bit through the sleeve of my frock. The more I struggled, the tighter it held me, ’til I was sure my arm would be twisted clean off my body. Panic set in. Thrashing and kicking, I lashed out blindly. The grip seemed to slacken. I yanked myself free, and raced up the last flight of stairs.
At the top was another landing, where moonlight shone in through a small window in the roof. I stopped to recover myself. A few moments later, Gracie caught up with me. She looked pale and shaken.
‘What happened?’ she said, crossly. ‘One minute you was right in front of me, the next, you was gone.’
‘I didn’t go nowhere. You were the one who disappeared.’
‘Did not,’ she said. ‘I was there all the time.’
I was having trouble making sense of this. My arm hurt like hell, and tired as I was, I felt my temper snap.
‘Try a trick like that again, and I’ll thump you one, Gracie Waite!’
She blinked. ‘A trick like what?’
‘You grabbed my arm, didn’t you? And you followed me right close ’til I was scared witless. What the heck are you trying to prove?’
Her mouth fell open. She looked about to cry. ‘You felt it, didn’t you?’
‘I felt you, playing pranks, yes!’
‘No, Tilly, that weren’t me,’ she said. ‘What you felt must have been the ghost.’
I wanted to believe her. Or part of me did. But how could this thing on the stairs be Kit Barrington? He’d saved my life. And now he was desperate for me to help him. So why the heck would he want to scare me?
‘I don’t know what I felt,’ I said, eventually. ‘I just want my bed, that’s all.’
‘You don’t believe me neither, do you?’ said Gracie, all huffy. ‘And there was me thinking you might be my friend.’
Before I could answer, she marched off. I followed her down a passage and into a large, cold room. I could just make out two narrow beds either side of the chimney breast. In the corner was a chest for storing clothes. And there were my things from home, folded up in a pile next to it. It churned me over to see them again, and I felt very low indeed.
‘Gracie,’ I said.
‘I in’t speaking to you.’
She undressed and got into bed without even saying good night. I took from this that the bed nearest the window was mine. Stripping down to my shift, I slid between the icy sheets and lay still. Ever so slowly, the bed began to warm, though it did little to comfort me.
A few feet away, Gracie tossed and turned in her bed. She’d been all kindness and smiles an hour ago; now she wouldn’t even talk. When I shut my eyes, I felt those pinching fingers again, and started weeping silently into my pillow. I felt truly wretched. What a dreadful house this was! I was beginning to wish I’d never set foot in the place, and had stayed at home with Ma.
I stopped mid-sob.
Gracie was right. Something was wrong with Frost Hollow Hall. Never mind that there were too few servants, or that Lady Barrington kept herself hidden away. I’d known all that before. But this ghost business seemed to have started only in the last few days.
Weren’t spirits meant to haunt the place where they’d been done a terrible wrong? That’s how it worked in a penny dreadful story. Not that I believed all that, but I didn’t have much else to go on, and right now it made a sort of sense. Maybe something had happened here in the house, and out on that lake. Trouble was, this wasn’t some daft story that Eliza might read. This was happening in front of my very eyes.
What’s more, the ghost on the stairs had seemed spiteful. Yet the Kit I knew was as gentle as an angel. It didn’t add up that he’d turn all angry and mean, unless something had happened here to make him that way.
My head was reeling. I’d never sleep now. Eventually, I sat up.
‘Gracie?’
She didn’t answer.
‘Not asleep, are you?’
‘No.’ She still sounded cross.
‘I’m sorry I was angry with you.’
‘Huh!’
Silence.
I tried again. ‘Please, Gracie. I so want us to be friends.’
Her bedclothes rustled as she turned towards me. ‘There is some sort of spirit here. I’m not making it up. And I’m not pulling pranks.’
‘You’d better tell me what’s been happening, then.’
For ages she didn’t speak. Then she said, ‘You won’t laugh?’
‘Promise.’
‘But it scares me even to think of it.’ And she started to cry.
‘Get in with me if it’ll help,’ I said. I had to keep her talking.
Gracie padded across to my bed and climbed in. Her hair spread over the pillow, tickling against my cheek. I propped myself up on an elbow so I could just about see her outline in the dark. She lay still, her gaze fixed on the windowpane above our heads.
‘It’s been happening these last few nights.’ Her voice was shaky. ‘At first, I thought it was just me being daft. The footmen often tell spooky stories of a night in the servants’ hall, and I do get scared easy.’
I reached for her hand. ‘What’s been happening?’
‘A feeling I get. Like someone’s right behind me.’
‘On the back stairs?’
‘’Specially on them back stairs. Sometimes it’s so close I feel it breathing on me,’ she said.
My heart thudded. ‘And does it pinch you?’
She hesitated. ‘No. It don’t touch me.’
So it was just me, then. The thought did little to steady my nerves.
‘And the broken china?’ I asked. ‘Does it scare you so much that you drop stuff?’
I felt her tense up. ‘They think it’s just me being clumsy. But I don’t drop nothing. Honest I don’t!’
‘So what happens?’
Gracie turned to face me. ‘It’s so strange, I can hardly explain it. What happens is things move by themselves.’
I shuddered. It sounded horrifying.
‘What’s doing all this, Tilly?’ she said.
Don’t ask me that. I turned away so she couldn’t see my lying eyes. Because I couldn’t tell her. I couldn’t tell anyone. Not if I wanted to keep my job.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Only I felt it too and didn’t like it much.’
Gracie went quiet again. After a bit she said, ‘P’raps we should keep this to ourselves.’
‘I wasn’t planning on telling Mrs Jessop.’
‘No, don’t you see? It’s just . . .’ Gracie shivered. ‘Well . . . it’s all about the dead in this house. Everything is. And it in’t right.’
‘Oh?’ I thought of Samuel Ketteridge and his love songs, and the chatter in the servants’ hall. True enough, this house was a cold, shadowy place, with too few servants to run things right. But tonight at supper it had seemed happy enough.
Gracie turned away. ‘You’ll be laying fires tomorrow. You’ll meet the Barringtons. Then you’ll see what I mean.’