Shiver (6 page)

The next morning the children got together to discuss Fiona’s nocturnal sighting of Eliza, and what it meant.

“I knew there was something wrong with Lucy,” Fiona explained to the others. “She just wouldn’t settle. Then I saw this light under the door, in the corridor outside. I opened it and there she was … just standing looking at me, with a lighted candle in her hand. That’s when I screamed and Mum came.”

“D’you think she suspects anything?”

“Mum, you mean? I don’t think so,” Fiona said. “I told her it was a bad dream … but she’s not stupid. She might put two and two together.”

“It’s very important that we don’t let on about Eliza and all this other weird stuff that’s been happening,” Charles told the others. “We don’t want Mum freaking out and deciding that it’s time to move.”

“She’d never move, surely?” Samuel cried. “You’ve been here too long … your family, I mean.”

Charles and Sebastian looked doubtful. “She has bad memories about the place, though. She didn’t move here until she got married. She might be glad of an excuse to leave,” Sebastian murmured.

“We can’t let that happen,” Fiona cut in.

“At least the power’s back on,” Samuel said, flicking a light switch on and off, just for the pleasure of it.

“I hope our days here aren’t numbered,” Charles added forlornly.

“Are you kidding?” Sebastian said. “Dodgy wiring, secret staircases, mouldy passageways, ghosts in the walls … who’d want to stay?”

“We do,” Charles and Fiona said at the same time, without meaning to.

On the other side, the ghost girl drifted … free at last. She left her brother behind in the dismal room, crying his heart out, crying for the past … and for their mother.

There was no point in doing that, Eliza knew. Their destiny, their future, lay with the children who had found the secret staircase.

She sailed through the air, passing through walls and panelling as easily as water flowing through a pipe. The boy Charles’s bedroom was empty. There was no one there this time.
Oh well
, she thought, and drifted on.

She liked the freedom, but longed for some solidity to her body. She was having some fun now, discovering what she was capable of. She hadn’t meant to smash things in Isabel’s studio; she had had a fright on realizing that she had strayed from the house unwittingly and had been in a rush to get back. But the vase had been deliberate … and highly successful in making her presence felt.

She hadn’t meant to scare anyone. She had just wanted to see what she could do with the lights. But tonight she seemed to have succeeded in scaring both Fiona and her mother.

The passing of time was nothing to Eliza; it either went very quickly, like a speed train passing through a tunnel, or so slowly that nothing at all seemed to move, and even the journey of one tiny mouse across a carpet could turn into a mammoth adventure, lasting for what appeared to be days. As the sun rose above the snowy moor, casting a reddish glow over everything, Eliza barely noticed the breaking of day. She was travelling through the house, on an expedition of her own.

The grandfather clock chimed in the empty hallway, striking away the hours. Eliza recognized some of the paintings on the wall from her own lifetime. She sometimes heard faint echoes from a past that no living being could possibly hear.

Her little brother was too afraid to accompany her. He didn’t like to be on the other side. He preferred to remain in the shadows, trapped in time. But Eliza wanted more than that. They had woken from their slumber, after four hundred years of restless sleeping. Only once before had they been woken from their slumber, when Catherine Morton had slept in the tower as a child. She used to hear them sometimes, through the walls. But they had never before managed to drift to the other side. Until now.

Now that Eliza had spoken with the boy Charles, she felt sure that things would be different.

Despite the snow, Granny and Mr Hughes had still managed to get home each night and back to Dunadd the next day, although they had nearly given up this morning,
as the roads were getting increasingly worse. Not much defeated Granny, however, not even the wildest snowstorm or severest blizzard.

A cruel light glimmered on the moor outside. It was freezing, turning pockets of land blue and transforming the branches into ice features. Eliza floated, shivering. “So beautiful,” she murmured to herself, gazing out at the purest white landscape. “So beautiful.”

Downstairs, she hovered in the hallway, hanging back in the shadows. She could hear voices coming from the direction of the kitchen. Fiona was discussing something with her mother and the old woman, Granny Hughes. Something about a pet rabbit.

Eliza watched, her sad dark eyes gleaming.

That girl has a mother
, Eliza thought.
A mother who cares for her and worries about her. And what have we?
It had been so long since Eliza had known what real life was like. Her thoughts became too painful. She did not like to think about her own mother.

A floorboard creaked and three pairs of eyes turned to the open kitchen doorway.

“What was that?” Chris Morton said.

Fiona peered into the gloom of the hallway.

Behind her Granny muttered, “Your mum told me about your secret staircase.”

“What?” She turned her attention back to the kitchen and the adults waiting there.

“Secret passageways and the like,” Granny was murmuring, as she busied herself at the sink. “You’ll never get me cleaning in that library again, knowing what I now
know, you mark my words.”

“But you didn’t use to clean it before,” Fiona said. “Remember? You said it gave you the creeps.”

“Aye, that’s right. And now it gives me the creeps a hundredfold worse.”

Fiona laughed. “A hundredfold? What kind of word is that?”

Mrs Morton laughed softly, listening to this exchange.

Granny sniffed. “Don’t they teach you to use a dictionary at that fancy school of yours, then? Mind you don’t go poking about any more, with that friend of yours. There’s enough trouble at the moment … what with the lights going on and off and the power being so unpredictable and all, without you adding to it.”

“How would we add to it?”

“Creeping about,” she barked.

“I don’t creep.”

“Yes you do, young lady … you creep,” Granny barked crossly. “That’s how you discover things you’re not supposed to … like that secret passageway, for instance. It’s not healthy, so it isn’t.”

“Now, now Granny, don’t take on so,” Mrs Morton interrupted, trying to keep the peace. Granny scrubbed at a pan with more ferocity than the task strictly warranted.

“It comes from reading too many books. Too much thinking never did nobody any good.” She slammed the pan down on the draining board. “And that’s a fact.”

Ignoring her, Fiona went back to the doorway and looked out.

Eliza pressed herself flat, almost merging with the
grandfather cock. No one saw her, but Fiona wandered out into the hall and stared hard into the shadows, right at the spot where Eliza was hiding.

Fiona realized at once that the substance of the air around her had changed subtly. She pulled the kitchen door closed behind her so that the adults were cut off. Then she turned to face the darkness.

Like the night before, her fingers and toes alerted her immediately to the extreme cold of Eliza’s presence.

She could see the ghost girl now, staring at her, eyes wide and gleaming. There was something hungry about their expression.

Eliza spoke. “Hello.”

Fiona jumped back in alarm. With one nervous hand, she reached out to see what she felt like. But she stopped before she got there and recoiled. There was a chalky substance all over her, caked on in places, like flour.

“Was it you I saw? Last night … outside my window?” Fiona asked.

The ghost girl was silent.

“Why were you looking in?”

Eliza blinked her large eyes soulfully. “I didst not intend to scare you,” she said. “I just wanted to see your room.”

“Who are you?” Fiona whispered, glancing nervously over her shoulder to make sure the door to the kitchen was still firmly shut, and that the adults couldn’t hear.

“I have already spoken my name, to your brother, I believe. I am Eliza Morton.”

Fiona stared.

“I’m Fiona,” she stuttered.

“Fiona,” the girl repeated softly.

“Can I ask you a question?” Fiona asked. The girl nodded her assent. Fiona continued. “What year is it?”

“Why, it is the year of Our Lord, 1604,” she replied, her voice as clear as a bell. Then she giggled. An eerie chuckle that unsettled Fiona. She was instantly aware of how cold the hallway had become. An icy breeze seemed to be seeping in under the floorboards. She glanced at the window at the end of the hallway, at the bottom of the stairs. It was a deep-set picturesque window, with several panes of glass. Snow was drifting down past the tower, big fluffy flakes swirling endlessly in the air.

Eliza followed her gaze and let out a small exclamation. “Ah. It is snowing.”

“How old are you?” Fiona persisted.

“I am nine years of age.”

“Only nine?”

“So I believe,” Eliza replied, her voice prim and proper as she carefully enunciated her words in her formal language. It sounded strange on Fiona’s ears, distant, yet oddly romantic.

“My brother and I were sleeping. But you woke us.”

“How did we wake you?”

Eliza shrugged. “You started talking about us. You saw us in the tapestry and then you tapped on our wall. You found our secret passageway. And your brother wrote a ghost story. Or made an attempt to. It was good enough to find us.”

She giggled again.

“Can I ask you another question?” Fiona said. “Whose house is this?”

“Why, it is my father’s, of course. But he is no longer
here,” she finished sadly.

“Where has he gone?” Fiona asked.

Eliza put her head on one side, quizzically, and appeared to be perplexed.

“I know not!”

“And your mother?” Fiona added.

Suddenly Eliza’s face was transformed. Her eyes gleamed with pent-up fury.

“I have no mother.”

“Surely,” Fiona murmured. “Surely you must have a mother. Everyone does.”

“Not I.”

“Why not?”

Eliza stared hard at Fiona, her eyes suddenly desperately sad.

Then she whispered in a small voice “She left us to die.”

At that moment the kitchen door burst open and Granny appeared, grappling with the Hoover. Fiona glanced back over her shoulder.

“Blast this wretched thing,” Granny was muttering under her breath.

When Fiona turned back, the girl had gone. Vanished into thin air before either of the two adults could see her. But not before Fiona had had time to ask her some essential questions. She felt as if she was getting somewhere, at last. She had to tell the others.
She found the boys upstairs, gathered in the drawing room. Samuel could instantly tell from her expression that something was wrong.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I saw her,” Fiona burst out. “I saw Eliza. I spoke to her
this time. She told me what they’re doing here. She said …” but then Fiona hesitated. She wondered exactly what Eliza had told her, wondered what to make of it exactly. It was all a bit muddled. “… she said it was 1604.”

The boys stared at her, uncomprehending.

“That’s what she said,” Fiona insisted. “She said … it was the year of Our Lord, 1604.”

“She’s stuck in time,” Charles said. “In her own time.”

“But she can see us,” Fiona finished.

“Where does that leave us?” Sebastian said.

“It leaves us with a very confused and troubled ghost girl. Two troubled ghost children,” Fiona added, “who feel as if they’ve been abandoned by their mother.”

“How do you know that?” Samuel asked.

Fiona’s brow wrinkled and she looked pensive and sad for a moment. “It was something she said, that’s all.”

“What?” Samuel was insistent.

Fiona hesitated a moment. “She said … she said that their mother had left them to die.”

All four children fell silent, allowing the facts to digest.

“How horrible,” Samuel murmured.

“Isn’t it?” Fiona said.

“What did she mean?” Charles added. “Their mother left them to die? How? What happened?”

“Now that,” Fiona sighed, “we don’t know. Not yet anyway.”

“How do we find out?” Sebastian said.

“I know,” Samuel put in quickly, catching Fiona’s eye. “There’s an old friend we haven’t visited in a while.”

“Mr MacFarlane,” Fiona muttered.

“He might know something,” Samuel said. “He knows lots about the history of Sheriffmuir. And maybe there’s another family ghost story that he hasn’t told you about.”

Charles was sceptical. “But he can’t know everything.”

Fiona rolled her eyes. “You’re only fourteen so you definitely don’t know everything. But Mr MacFarlane’s … well, he’s …”

“Old?” Samuel supplied the word.

“Exactly. He’s ancient.”

“He’s not
that
ancient,” Sebastian put in. “He’s fit enough to look after himself, anyway.”

“I suppose it’s worth a try,” Charles admitted finally.

Their voices faded away into silence.

A child sat alone in the darkness. No one knew he was there. On the floor before him was a group of clumsy-looking toy soldiers, roughly carved from wood. The red paint on them was faded and peeling, but the boy didn’t notice. He moved them around, dragging them through the dirt, pretending to march them across an imaginary battlefield. It was a way of keeping his misery at bay. He was pretending, entering a world of make-believe, where his only comfort was to be found.

They were primitive-looking toys, scarred and marked by their great age. The boy’s loving hands had worn them smooth with handling. They were all he had: the only souvenirs from a life long since faded away. Everything the boy had once known had crumbled into disrepair, leaving nothing but this forlorn little corner of the building, where he and his sister had slept for so many hundreds of years,
like children in a fairy tale, waiting to be woken. And now that they were awake … what now? Were they to be forever haunted by their own dreadful memories?