'But when the door opened, it was as if we had tripped a wire. How can I explain it? I felt that something inside was enraged at our intrusion. Imagine a storm of noise. A violence in the very air. It was as if every wall and floorboard was being pounded with a hammer. There was no light, we couldn't see beyond the doorframe, and all around us every timber and brick seemed ready to crack. The house was alive. The sheer volume of the noise forced us back to the car.
'I still don't know what prompted Harry to turn and then run back to the place. Perhaps it was the thought of a young girl being subjected to this madness. And I followed him, through the door and into the hallway. I covered my ears, but once inside the din grew worse. As if a storm, an electric storm, had crossed the threshold and become trapped inside. I could feel it in my chest — it was so loud the vibrations interfered with my breathing. I am not ashamed to say I was frightened witless. I would not have been able to stand more than a few minutes in there.
'By an empty coat rack we found the light switches, but they were useless. The electricity had been cut off too. But we carried on. With only a glimmer of moonlight coming through the reception, we went further inside. We bumped around, stumbled into one other. We were utterly disoriented by the noise. I remember looking at the ceiling and wondering what could possibly create such hellish sounds. It seemed to be coming from underground and from above us also.
'Harry led the way. We took a quick look around the ground floor. There were papers everywhere, and books. The ceiling leaked in places, and the latches had rusted the windows shut. Damp had soaked into the carpets and the furniture. It was freezing. Colder inside than it was outside.
'After the kitchen, we couldn't face going upstairs, we were ready to bolt. No one could have withstood the cold or the noise. But on our way back down the hallway to the front door, Harry saw something. A sign of life. A light under the door of the coal cellar.
'We opened the door to the cellar and realised the light was candle light. There were stone steps leading down. They turned a corner into the cellar. We shouted for Eliot from the top of the staircase but there was no reply. Even if he was down there, I doubt he would have heard us above the racket. So we had no choice. We went down.
'Into the cellar, where the air felt dense, as if full of fog, and terribly cold. The coldest part of the house so far. It was as if it were saturated with water droplets that suddenly froze on you. I was there for no more than a few minutes and yet it got into my chest. I suffered a breathing complaint for some time after.
'There was a smell too. A mixture of things. All of it unpleasant. Tallow smoke, and sour sweat. Damp stones, and other things I can't place. Like incense, it seemed to me, but I can't be sure.
'At the bottom of the stairs, the cellar was partially lit in the middle by the candles. You couldn't see the far walls. It was dark around the edges. But I can still see the middle of that cellar. With Eliot and Beth and Ben in it, just as we found them.
'It's hard to say how long they'd been there. Or what exactly they were doing. But it was wrong. Anyone could see that.
'The centre of the floor was marked somehow. Lashed with lines, angles, circles. All criss-crossing. Marked in white chalk. With candles set on plates and saucers here and there. A circular arrangement, I think, around other things.
'They were all on the floor. Eliot and Ben lay on Beth. All of them in the middle of these marks. They were holding her down.
'Ben saw us first. His mouth opened. He said no. Shook his head.
He was afraid. We all were. But we went in there. To the circle, you see. Standing still made things worse. You had to move. But we panicked Ben. He fled. Just knocked us out the way. And Eliot called out to him. Called him a fool, but made no attempt to stop him. He just kept Beth down there, on the floor, as she moved. Horrible it was. To see her mouth open like that. And her body, twisting.
'And him so fragile on top of her. No weight on him. All of it had dropped right off. Yellow too. His skin was yellow. Like jaundice.
Dehydration. God knows. And on the floor I saw bottles. Medicine bottles.
'I had no strength left. But Harry called out to Eliot, who ignored us. He was busy. Keeping Beth down and watching something. Over on the far side of the room. At the edge of the candlelight. Then I noticed it too. Against the bricks where he stared. It was moving. Coming forward by going up the wall and then across the ceiling. Against the light. Against the way candles make shadows.
'It looked as if there were limbs coming from it and something about the head. Wrapped around it, but coming loose. But I couldn't be sure in the dark.
'But the way it came across to us. I don't know. I flinched. I must have turned away and fallen. I fell, and took Harry over with me. Maybe I heard a voice too. How can I be sure? No one could think straight or trust their ears or eyes in there. I've been over it again. Again and again. And now, well, who can say?
'But I remember crawling over Harry when something brushed against me. Over me. It swept over me. And I tried to get to my feet. And then she started with the worst sound of all. The girl wailing like that. It went right through me. I wanted to run. And then I stood up and I saw something. The last of it. Going up the stairs. Up it went. Like a spider on a wall. Into the dark.
'And suddenly it was silent. Completely silent.
'Beth stopped crying. She made no further sound down there. But rocked back and forth. On her own, just backward and forward. Looking at nothing, at nobody.
'And Eliot began to laugh.
'He stopped when Harry slapped him, hard.
'I wanted out of it. My mind was still full of that thing going up the stairs, into the house. The house we were still inside. But I wrapped Beth in my coat first, and she stopped the rocking. I thought she'd fainted and she was so heavy to carry, but I took her out of the cellar and out of the house. Harry came behind with Eliot.
'"Did you see it?" Eliot asked us, over and over, as if he had trouble believing it too.
'And when we were outside, in the long grass, Harry grabbed Eliot by the throat and, for a moment, I believed he would kill him. "Is this how you repay us? With your clever tricks? You've scared that girl half to death. Was it mescaline in those bottles? Are you insane?" and so on.
'Eliot grinned. "Yes, Harry," he said. "Mad as a hatter. But it came."
'But I wouldn't let him go on. No. Not like that. Pleased with himself. To have pride at a moment like that with the girl so badly off. And after the movements down there, under the house. I was overcome. I shook him. And he begged me to stop, but I kept on. I hurt him. But it meant nothing. Nothing to Eliot. He just wanted to go back inside. "It's not finished," he said. I was a bloody fool. I didn't understand, he kept telling me.
'Harry stopped me. The girl, he said. We have to take care of the girl. So I stopped. And we left Eliot on the lawn, in front of that place with the door open.
'We drove Beth to the Memorial Hospital. She was our concern, now. Eliot could go to hell. But the night would not end. When I reached into the back of the car to check on her, she was cold. I panicked. I shouted for Harry to stop the car. He pulled over. We put her on the road. There was no breath coming from her. No pulse we could feel. She was stiff with death.
'I attempted resuscitation. It did nothing. The girl, with her cold mouth, was gone. There was nothing we could do.
'We put her back in the car. Harry said we would take her to the hospital and the police would be called. I was numb. It was too much to believe. Eliot had killed her.