Property of a Lady(13)
Now that it’s night the house feels colder than it did this afternoon, but before leaving the Black Boar I put on a couple of extra sweaters and a fleece-lined jacket, together with thick flannel trousers and woollen socks. I’ve caught more colds than I can count over the years by spending the night in icily-cold houses, waiting for ghosts who never turn up, so now I swathe myself in layers of wool. I look like a roly-poly Mrs Noah, but there’s nobody to see me except the occasional spook.
11.55 p.m.
I have a feeling that something’s starting to happen. It’s not anything I can easily describe on paper, but it’s as if something’s disturbed the atmosphere. As if Charect House is enclosed in a glass bubble, and something outside is chiselling silently at the glass’s surface, to find a way in. Or even as if the tape recorders might be picking up sounds that humans aren’t supposed to hear. Like the singing of mermaids or the sonar shrieks of bats. Or the hopeless sobbing of tormented souls, unable to leave a beloved home . . .
(This last sentence was barely legible, having been impatiently scored through, as if the writer had been exasperated at her sudden display of nerves, or perhaps even embarrassed by it. The next section was written clearly and decisively, as if the pen had been firmly pressed down on the page with the aim of dispelling any weakness.)
12.15 a.m.
We’ve passed the witching hour – although it always amuses me that people set such store by midnight, as if ghosts have wristwatches and check them worriedly to make sure they aren’t missing an appointment to haunt somewhere. ‘Dear me, I see it’s five to twelve already, I’d better be off or I’ll be late for the moated grange . . .’
What I will admit is that there can sometimes be a vague eeriness about the crossing of one day to the next, or one year to the next, as if something invisible’s being handed from one pair of hands to another. And I have to say that when the old clock in here chimed twelve a short time ago, it startled me considerably. (It’s somehow not a very nice chime either, although that’s probably due to rust in the mechanism.)
It was shortly after the chiming of the clock that something happened.
I’d been reading (J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, just for the record) with my notebook and pen on the chair arm. Actually, I was almost falling asleep: what with the sweaters and the two oil lamps, I was comfortably warm and feeling drowsy. Also, I’d had a slug of whisky to help keep out the cold.
I must have been on the edge of sleep when something jerked me back to consciousness, and I sat up sharply, trying to identify what it was. I waited, listening. Sounds outside? Yes. Someone was walking very quietly and very stealthily around the outside of the house.
The chances were that it was a curious local skulking around, or teenagers playing a trick: ‘There’s a ghost-hunter up at Charect – let’s give her a real scare.’ At any minute a garishly-painted mask might thrust itself against the French window, or a white-sheeted figure, wringing its hands and moaning, would prance across the gardens.
But for all that, I was slightly unnerved. I flatter myself that if ever I met a real spook I’d cope with it, but prowlers and housebreakers are a different pair of shoes entirely. And there was that business of the missing child to take into account.
After a moment I quenched the oil lamp. Its light died, but it hissed to itself in the shadows, like a coiled serpent. There was a pale blur from the French windows, where the faded curtains were partly open. The footsteps came again, and a flickering light showed in the monochrome tangle of the gardens. It was a smeary kind of light that didn’t look like an ordinary electric torch, and I reached cautiously for the Polaroid. If there were any spooks that would show up on film, J. Lloyd and his council might as well have their money’s worth. And if it did turn out to be some sick-minded child-stealer, then his features would be recorded and his capture made easier.
The light was coming closer, and the steps crunched on the gravel, but it was only when the footsteps stepped off the gravel on to grass that I heard the other sounds, and as God’s my judge, they’re going to give me nightmares for years.
A soft hoarse voice was weaving itself in and out of the greasy shadows. It was slightly blurred, but the words were dreadfully clear: I heard them as clearly as if they were being burned through my eyes straight into my brain.
‘Open lock to the dead man’s knock . . .
Fly bolt, and bar, and band . . .
Nor move, nor swerve, joint, muscle or nerve,
At the spell of the dead man’s hand.’
I have heard some macabre things in my years with the Psychic Research Society, but I have never heard anything so chillingly terrifying as that soft chanting that dribbled across the dark garden of Charect House.
The sullen light came closer, and the footsteps were louder. I fumbled for the Polaroid, although to be honest, I’m not sure if I could even have found the shutter, never mind pressed it. The dreadful voice began its chant again:
‘Open lock to the dead man’s knock,
Fly bolt, and bar, and band.
Sleep all who sleep – wake all who wake.
But be as the dead for the dead man’s sake.’
It was a minute or so before I recognized the words, but when I did, a chill traced its way down my spine. I knew what the rhyme was, and I knew what it meant. It sprang from a dark and very ancient belief embedded deep in the consciousness of Man – a belief and a desire stretching all the way back to Old Testament times. It’s the desire to be invisible, soundless, to possess the ability to render an enemy helpless. But underlying that – perhaps even underpinning it – is a deeper, more visceral need, and that’s the need for power over the dead.