Deadlight-Hall(6)

Storm rain was starting to spatter the windows, and Michael, who often suffered from a severe headache in a thunderstorm, was aware of needle-points of pain starting to jab at his temples. He thought he would make a quick tour of the rest of the house, then beat it back to College and take a couple of paracetamol. He closed the window against the rain, and he was about to go down to the hall when he heard footsteps behind him, and then laboured breathing, as if someone was carrying something heavy. He turned, expecting to see one of Jack Hurst’s men, but there was no one there. Had the sound been simply an echo? No, there it was again. Footsteps – slow, rather uncertain ones, coming from a second, narrower flight of stairs at the far end of the landing. Second floor? Yes, of course. And muffled thudding or hammering from up there.

Then a voice called softly, ‘Are you here?’

The words were ordinary, the words of someone looking for somebody, but Michael found them extremely sinister. He took a step towards the second stair.

‘Hello? Are you looking for someone?’ His words echoed in the empty space, and although he could still hear the difficult breathing, there was no response.

Two, then three flickers of lightning tore into the house, and in those split-second flares of brilliance, Michael saw a figure standing on the narrow stairs – a small figure, not exactly deformed, but hunched over …

A child? Frightened by the storm? Maybe it was the child sought by the owner of that voice he had heard. There was a blur of movement, and the sound of the footsteps again – this time going away, back up the stairs, not exactly running, but scuttling away. Michael hesitated, then started forwards.

‘Don’t be frightened,’ he called. ‘It’s only a thunderstorm. Wait for me and we’ll go downstairs – I think someone’s looking for you, anyway.’

The stairs wound sharply to the right, decamping on to a second landing, strewn with more builders’ rubble and tools. It looked as if two smaller flats were being created up here. A sullen light came in through the windows, but there was no sign of the figure. The thudding was still going on – it sounded as if someone might be hammering somewhere under the roof, but Michael’s headache was throbbing against one side of his head, and his vision was blurring slightly, as if he was seeing underwater.

But he was sure he had seen a figure, and he was equally sure it could not have gone back downstairs without passing him. It must still be somewhere here, perhaps hiding fearfully from the thunder, or even from Michael himself. Nell’s small daughter, Beth, hated thunderstorms, and always shut herself into a narrow storeroom at the back of the shop.

He looked into the partially built flats, finding nothing, and began to have the feeling of having fallen into the kind of nightmare where the dreamer embarks on a panic-stricken chase for something he never reaches. Was there anywhere else he ought to check? Yes, a further flight of stairs at the end of this landing, small, half-hidden, dusty-looking. Attic floor? It seemed to be where the thudding was coming from.

The movement came again, no more than a blurred outline, but more substantial than the shadows that clustered there. It was small enough to be a child, but there was something about it that was not entirely childlike. Michael hesitated, then went up the stairs, which swayed slightly, and creaked like the crack of doom. They had not done so when the small figure went up them.

The attic floor was dim and warm and there were huge pools of shadows and a thick smell of dirt. Michael had the sensation of the immense old roof pressing down on him.

Massive beams spanned the open space overhead; stringy cobwebs dripped from them, and thick swathes of roofing felt hung down in tatters. Shreds of light trickled through in those places. It was to be hoped that Jack Hurst and his men would make the roof sound before the flats were actually sold.

Items of discarded household junk lay around – old bits of broken furniture including several dismantled iron bed-frames. They were small beds – children’s beds?

The attic looked as if it had once been split into two or three separate rooms; there were vague outlines of door posts and of a couple of piles of rubble that might be a collapsed wall. At the far end a door looked as if it opened on to an inner room that must be situated on the corner of the house, almost under the eaves. Servants’ rooms, thought Michael. Cramped and airless. Cold in winter and stiflingly hot in summer. There was an unhappy feel to the place, but there was no sign of the small figure, and the strange hammering had stopped. He would go back downstairs and find one of the workmen to ask if a child was known to be in the house.