Shiver (12 page)

“But why?” Fiona protested, glaring at her mother and fighting to hold back the tears.

“Why?” her mother repeated. “Because I’ve seen those children for myself … just like you have!”

“I know that, but shouldn’t we find out what happened to them?” Fiona cried.

“I
dread
to think what happened to them,” Chris Morton said quietly.

She would not be drawn any further on the subject.

“It’s been a hard decision to make, but I believe it’s a sensible one … under the circumstances.”

She sounds like a politician
, Fiona thought bitterly.

Granny Hughes said nothing. She stood at the kitchen sink, wondering how she would cope without life up at Dunadd House. It was certainly time for her and Jim to take a rest from all the hard work, but there was no doubt about it, she would miss the place. And she would miss the children. She’d known them since they were babies. Her throat constricted at the thought of it, and she could hardly bring herself to look at Mrs Morton. Mr Hughes would be devastated when she told him. She had not dared to do so yet. He was out chopping wood in the barn, loading it onto the back of the trailer. His heart would be broken when she told him. The two of them would be lost
without Dunadd, in spite of its ghosts.

She had been right after all then. Granny had always suspected that this place was cursed. She’d felt it in her bones.

Fiona stormed off next door to find Samuel.

“What?” he gazed at her open-mouthed when she told him. His heart sank. “You’re all leaving?”

She nodded grimly.

His mother stood behind them, listening. So the Mortons were finally going to leave Dunadd. If they
were
leaving, Isabel thought to herself philosophically, then there was certainly no future for herself and Samuel here.

Without saying anything, she left the two children to their private commiserations and wandered across the courtyard to the barn. She pushed the door open onto the dusty silence and ran her hand along the worktops. She had put so much effort into creating this space for herself.
All I need is an empty room
, she thought. But she would miss working here in the old barn on Sheriffmuir, listening to the wind nudging at the door and looking out of the small window at the bare trees and the looming tower of Dunadd.

Just then the door was pushed open and Chris Morton appeared.

“Isabel, I have some news I thought you should know.”

“I’ve just heard,” Isabel said. “The children were talking.”

“Oh, I see …” Chris Morton looked apologetic. “I
am
sorry. I know how happy you and Samuel have been here, but I know it’s the right thing to do. I can’t risk anything else happening to my sons. I’m sure you feel the same way about
Samuel.”

Isabel nodded.

“I’m going to make arrangements as soon as possible and then put the house on the market. That should hopefully give you enough time to find other accommodation.”

Isabel was silent. She didn’t relish the prospect of living on in the cottage while the huge house next door stood empty. It would be very strange indeed. She would have to look into it right away. As soon as the snow began to melt. Her heart felt heavy as she put things into boxes and jars.
Might as well make a start
, she reasoned, trying to remain positive.

After the discovery of the secret room, the two child spirits had kept their distance.

Everyone had made a concerted effort to tidy up the mess resulting from Charles’s brutal assault on the brickwork; they swept up the dust and debris, trying to leave the offending area as clean as possible. Sometimes, one or other of them would drift upstairs, into the exposed inner chamber that had lurked within the tower for four centuries. It was difficult to believe that it had always been there.

Fiona went to the window, peering through the ivy and the broken shutters at the scene below. Light had entered this room for the first time in four hundred years, and the objects inside it were only just beginning to adjust to the intrusion. Spiders and mice no longer made it their home. Eliza and John had not been seen since.
What had happened to them?
Fiona wondered.
Where had they gone?

Inspecting John’s wooden soldiers made her sad. She wanted to give him something back, so she had asked her brothers for some of their old toys. They gathered together a pirate ship and some tiny model figures and left them in the centre of the room. In addition, Fiona had retrieved an old satin party dress from the back of her wardrobe,
knowing it would fit Eliza perfectly. She took it upstairs and laid it on one of the beds, which had been brushed and swept clean of both cobwebs and dirt.
What would they make of their gifts?

The snow had gone and both families were counting the days before it was time to say their farewells. It was a difficult period for all of them … unsettling, to say the least.

Packing cases and crates filled the hallway, and Samuel skirted his way around them in search of Fiona. She was sitting halfway up the stairs, her head in her hands.

“We can keep in touch,” he said, nudging her.

She didn’t speak at first.

“That’s not the point,” she muttered. “The boys and I were born here. How can we leave it behind?”

Samuel slid onto the step below her.

“You’re right,” he said. “I’ve only lived here a year, but I’m still going to miss it. I can’t believe it.”

“Neither can I.”

“Why is she being so stubborn?” Fiona cried. “She just goes ahead and makes a decision that affects us all without even asking us. How come adults have all the power?”

“Because they think they know what’s best for us,” he suggested.

“Well they don’t … especially not in this case.”

“We can’t let it happen,” Fiona protested. She was sitting with her brothers in their father’s old library.

“We have to,” Charles told her. “You have to accept it. There’s nothing we can do about it.”

“It’s like Mum said,” Sebastian added. “When we’re adults we can make up our own minds about where we’re going to live. But until then …”

“Why are you two so ready to give up? Why can’t you make a fuss?”

“What’s the point?” Sebastian sighed.

“There’s every point in the world,” Fiona burst out. “Because of this,” she slammed her fist down on their father’s old desk, “and because of this …” She swept her hand round at the books and pictures lining the walls.

“They’re just
things
,” Charles said. “We can take them with us.”

“I’m not talking about things. I’m talking about history. Family history. A sense of place. A sense of belonging. We can’t take that with us.”

Eliza Morton was watching all of this from the shadows, vaguely impressed. There was more to her descendant, Fiona, than met the eye.

She fingered the pretty shiny dress that Fiona had left out for her. She had looked upon it with scorn, at first, refusing to wear it. John played with his pirate ship and all the little figures, murmuring to himself in peaceful contentment, but she had promised herself she would not be bought as easily as that.

But gradually she had gazed at the dress, touching the material occasionally, stroking its satin smoothness. And in the end, she had put it on.

“A dress for me. A pirate ship for you,” she had whispered softly.

Fiona could not hear her.

Eliza Morton giggled to herself, as if thinking of a private joke.

She drifted off, in search of her brother. He was often hiding these days, making himself so thin and flat that not even
she
could always make out the increasingly faint outline of him. He had a knack of merging into the background.

Eliza wanted to keep an eye on Chris Morton before the family left for good, and she wanted her brother to help her. The two of them would watch Mrs Morton, dog her every move.

“What is it Samuel?” Isabel asked, watching her son pack up his few remaining belongings into the box marked SAMUEL’S ROOM. He had filled that crate in Edinburgh just over a year ago, in order to come and live here, on Sheriffmuir. One year on and they were nomads once again.

Samuel didn’t look at her. He had his back turned. She wondered if he blamed her.

“I was happy here,” Samuel admitted. “I don’t want to leave.”

“I know you don’t. And surprisingly enough … neither do I.”

“She’s made up her mind though.”

“Looks like it.”

“Why can’t things ever stay the same?” he asked.

“I don’t know, Samuel.”

“Life always gets messed up in the end.”

“Not always,” she added, putting a hand on his shoulder.

“It’s easy for you to say. You’re an adult. You can go wherever you like,” he complained.

“Is that what you think?”

She looked at his few things scattered about. She could see why he would miss it. She would too. The cottage had become theirs. She would miss relaxing on the sofa at night, listening
to the murmur of the Wharry Burn through the window, or the breeze sighing in the trees. She loved it here as much as he did.

“It’s not quite like that,” Isabel said.

“What’s not?”

“Adults can’t always go where they want.”

“It feels like it.”

“I can’t always control things. I wish I could. The cottage isn’t mine. I have to leave it, if the Mortons are leaving.”

He said nothing, but threw another book onto the pile in the crate.

Fiona caught up with him later. He was looking gloomy. He already felt as if the others were distancing themselves from him, making ready for their departure. They were going to stay with an aunt in Argyll, while preparing the house and estate for selling.

“It’s just a small cottage she’s got on the estate, so we won’t be living in a big house or anything. But I think that might be quite nice in a way.” She was trying to put a brave face on it.

“Granny and Mr Hughes are still going to come up to Dunadd sometimes, to keep an eye on the place while it’s empty,” Fiona continued.

“Oh good.” He wondered if this was supposed to be a comfort to him.

“I’ll email you every day,” she said.

He nodded.

“You can come and stay sometimes, if you like. Mum said that would be fine.”

He nodded again.

“Don’t be so glum.” She nudged him affectionately. “Nothing will stop us from being friends. Not you and me.”

He smiled, taking courage. “You’re right,” he said. “I just wish …” He couldn’t trust himself to continue. His life at Dunadd during the past year was beyond anything he could ever have imagined happening in his life. He would never forget it. Never. He wanted every detail about Dunadd to be imprinted and scorched on his mind forever.

“We’re only taking a few things at first,” Fiona said. “Essentials and stuff. Until we find somewhere else to live. Permanently I mean.”

“Who would have believed it … the Mortons leaving after all this time,” Samuel murmured.

“I know,” Fiona said. “Hard to believe, isn’t it. I wonder how the house will feel without us.”

Outside the moon gave off a light so bright that the shadows of things stood out clearly: the greenhouse; an abandoned wheelbarrow filled with ice and dead leaves; places where no one would go again; objects no one would pick up, except to tidy away or discard … not to use.

Later that night, the four sat watching television in the downstairs room next to the kitchen. It was the scruffiest room in the house … and the coldest. They’d pulled blankets over themselves to keep out the chill and huddled close together for comfort.

Suddenly the television reception went fuzzy, black and white snow fizzing across the screen.

“Hey, I was watching that,” Sebastian cried. “Who’s got
the remote?”

“Not me,” Fiona said.

Then she turned her head slowly. A strange and solemn little figure had come to stand quietly behind Samuel’s chair.

“Samuel,” she whispered, her face ashen.

“What? What is it?”

She nodded her head and he glanced over his shoulder.

John Morton stood there in silence, his small pale face distressed. His cheek bones were thin and hollow, his eyes dark and sad and Fiona felt instantly sorry for him; this sad little boy, who slept upstairs among the cobwebs and relied on his sister for company.

They all looked at him, waiting for him to speak.

“It wasn’t our mother,” he whispered.

No one said anything.

“She did not do anything wrong.”

There was an awful silence as Fiona considered what to say. The boys were all speechless, hopeless in a crisis.

“No one is saying that she did,” she murmured, looking at him carefully.

Suddenly another dark figure loomed in the shadows behind him.

“What are you telling them?” Eliza whispered fiercely.

“I wasn’t. I was just …” He sounded pitiful and sad.

“Be quiet,” she said crossly.

Fiona glanced at the scared little boy, feeling sorrier than ever.

Eliza Morton had John by the hand now and was leading him away. He was beginning to fade, to grow thinner and fainter.

“Wait!” Fiona cried, willing them to stop. “What happened to you? Who put you in that room?” But Eliza dragged him out of the light into the shadows of the passageway outside.

“It was not her fault. They made her do it.”

It was a faint whisper only, but they all heard his voice clearly just before he disappeared.

The large house creaked and moaned all about them, as if conscious that huge changes were imminent. The family were asleep in their beds. Boxes and suitcases were half-packed in hallways and corridors. The mahogany grandfather clock that had marked time for two hundred years, ticked away the remaining hours relentlessly. Tomorrow was the day they had all been dreading. The Mortons would pack up and abandon the house for good, leaving Granny Hughes and her husband to supervise the place in their absence. After this, Samuel and his mother would slowly prepare to leave. They had another few days left. Isabel had contacted a friend in Edinburgh and they were going to stay in her flat for a while.

Samuel was broken-hearted. He’d become used to the open landscape, the trees, the murmuring Wharry Burn, the hills. He couldn’t imagine being cooped up in the city again.

The only voices to echo here would be the voices of ghost children, looking for an absent mother.

Now the house waited for them to leave.

“I am frightened,” John whispered again.

“You are always frightened.”

The barely visible figures slowly circled the dark
spiralling staircase until they came to rest outside one door in particular.

Eliza Morton’s eyes gleamed.

“I like this not at all,” John murmured.

“Hush!” She silenced him with a glance.

They crept through the narrow gap in the doorway and stood looking across at the four-poster bed. Chris Morton was sleeping soundly. Despite her fears and anxieties she had had no trouble in falling asleep tonight. Exhaustion had claimed her entirely. She was completely unaware of the room around her and of the two figures who crept ever closer to her bed …

They stood looking down at her sleeping peacefully. Eliza held her candle aloft, the light from it flickering dimly over the bed.

“I wish we had a mother,” John wailed softly.

“We did have a mother,” Eliza replied. “She abandoned us.”

“She did not,” John protested, rounding on her. “I remember what happened … and she never meant to leave us. She was broken-hearted.”

Buried memories resurfaced from the long distant past as they remembered how they had first got sick.

No one in the house at Dunadd was suffering from the plague. There had been isolated incidents reported as far afield as Stirling and Alloa, but no one up here on the estate had succumbed, where the air was clean. Their parents had felt secure in this knowledge … until John took ill, very suddenly.

At first, they thought it was nothing worse than a common
cold, but then the bruises and swellings started to appear. Their mother watched in horror, refusing to believe the truth. Although their parents were wealthy, the children, John and Eliza, had always lived in fear of the household staff. They knew that no one would help them or be kind to them, so when Eliza fell sick as well, it was their mother who nursed them.

The servants told her she should not do so; that she would catch the disease herself and die. But she refused to listen. She would not abandon her children in their hour of distress. She wiped and bathed their little bodies, sat with them as they suffered. Their mother cared not about contracting the disease as well. But she remained untouched. Throughout the course of their illness – which lasted a matter of days – she stayed fit and healthy, nursing them until they were dead. Then she sat in the little room where they died, refusing to move. The fetid air bothered her not one bit, despite the protestations of her husband and the servants. She would not budge.

“It is not safe to touch the bodies,” she was told.

“They will be buried in a decent burial ground,” their mother insisted, as finally she was taken to her own room to rest, sitting in silence for hours until at last she began to weep and mourn.

Unbeknown to her, her instructions were ignored. Lime was spread around the room, on the beds and the floors, and the children were put into sacks and thrown into a communal grave: a plague pit on the other side of the hill, near Alloa.

Two headstones were erected in the graveyard on the edge
of the moor, down by the little chapel where their mother sometimes had worshipped with her children. No one but their father and the priest knew that the graves were empty; that their bodies lay elsewhere. Their mother was never told the truth. Her husband constructed a convenient web of lies. He wanted to offer her comfort, that was all, and he knew that two little memorial stones were the only comfort she would have.

The empty room was sealed up on the advice of all. The servants and staff were glad when every trace of the room was removed, knowing they had treated the children badly at times, especially in the last days of their illness. They had refused to help them, or give them so much as a sip of water. They were too terrified of the plague.

But their mother had not been afraid. Disobeying her husband, she had gone to her children’s aid.

Houses keep hold of their memories. It was a long time before the bricked-up room ceased to be remembered, and became a secret truly kept. Finally, there was no one left living who remembered. The secret room remained a secret, until four children began to probe and pry …

“Don’t you remember?” John persisted bravely, working on his sister. “She had no choice. She nursed us until we were dead. Everyone told her that she must seal up the room afterwards.”

There was a slight softening of Eliza’s face as she listened to her brother’s words. “They said the bodies were not safe to touch.”

“That is right, Eliza. You remember now?”

In their minds, the two children could hear their mother’s distraught cries as if it was only yesterday. Four hundred
years had intervened, but her love for them had never faded or gone away.

“They forced her to,” John muttered. “They said it was the right thing to do. They sprinkled grey powder everywhere, all over our bodies and the beds and furniture, before they took us away to the pit. Then they bricked it up. But she wailed and wailed.”

Eliza looked at her little brother with dawning realisation. “You are right. Now I remember. Now I understand.”

“None of this is
their
mother’s fault,” he added, looking down at the woman sleeping in the bed before them. And taking his older sister by the hand, he led her quietly from the room.

Chris Morton slept on, suspecting not a thing.