He turned the key in the lion’s-head lock and the door swung open, gaping wide to invite him into the blackness of the entrance hall. He stepped inside and groped for the light switch. The lights flickered on, faded for a moment and then flickered back on. Bad connection somewhere, he thought. He’d investigate the problem, but not now.
He wiped his muddy feet on the mat, then walked up the passage to Mandy’s writing study, knowing he’d find some paper there on which to write a note. Taking a sheet of A4 from the fresh sheaf in the printer and a pen from the little jar on her desk, he paused to think of the best way to express his feelings. This could sound so lame if he didn’t get it right.
It was while he paused that he heard the giggle. He turned to look out of the study doorway. It had come from further down the passage.
‘Mandy?’ he called out.
There it was again. Laughter, female laughter, soft but perfectly distinct.
He replaced the pen in the jar and loaded the blank paper back into the printer, then left the study and headed down the passage in the direction of the sound. He passed the dining room door on his left, then the kitchen door. Both rooms were dark.
‘Mandy?’ he called again. He halted a moment to flick on one of the Bakelite switches he admired so much. Another light came on, illuminating the empty passage ahead for just an instant or two before it flickered, died, came dimly back on again. Definitely something wrong with the electrics, he decided. So much for the period charm of old houses.
He’d gone a few more yards down the passage when the lights died altogether. Plunged into darkness, he stopped. ‘Well, we saw that coming,’ he muttered. Didn’t Mandy keep a torch somewhere? Yes, but he’d never find it.
He stumbled on, feeling his way. Found another switch and waggled it. Nope. Dead. Mandy must be somewhere at the back of the house, the utility room or the laundry room, probably hunting about looking for a torch or a candle to light. He hoped he wouldn’t scare her half to death, appearing in the dark in the middle of a bloody power cut. ‘Mandy,’ he called in a strong voice, to alert her of his presence. ‘It’s me, Todd. Where are you?’
When he saw the glimmering glow up ahead his first thought was that she must have lit a candle. It wasn’t, though. It was almost like some kind of floating, strangely phosphorescent mist that grew inexplicably thicker as he made his way deeper into the passage. The peculiar, sickly greenish-yellow light seemed to be more intense further along, beyond the point where the passage curved out of sight.
He called her name again.
This time, as if in reply, came another sound. It wasn’t the female laughter he’d heard before. It was a snickering cackle. It wasn’t far away.
Todd felt his flesh turn a little colder. ‘Stop messing around, Mandy,’ he called out, and heard the nervous tremor in his own voice.
He followed the bend in the passage, the strange, intensifying glow ahead somehow leading him on. Through it, he saw a door. He remembered what Mandy had told him and the chill in his body became a shudder.
So the cottage had a cellar, after all. He’d been so willing to disbelieve her; scepticism was a luxury he no longer possessed.
He was suddenly terribly afraid. Gripped by a panicked desire to turn and run, he realised that he couldn’t. He was being drawn to the cellar door.
Now he was standing at its threshold. He reached out with a quaking hand, but before he could touch it the door swung open, and he found himself looking down a twisting stone stairway.
Something like cobwebs brushed his face. The eerie light shone intensely from down there. Unable to stop himself, he began to head downwards into the cellar. His footsteps echoed off the craggy stone walls that surrounded him.
The door closed behind him with a reverberating thud.
And when he saw what was coming towards him from below, his mouth opened for a scream that never found voice.
FIFTEEN
After getting caught up in traffic jams on the A40, Mandy didn’t get back to Summer Cottage until early evening. She shivered as she opened the front door, feeling a chill there that she was certain wasn’t just caused by the dropping outside temperature or the mist that hung heavy in the night air. When she flipped on the lights, they seemed to flicker uncertainly before coming on.
Buster was plainly unhappy to leave the car and she had to coax him into the cottage with a dog treat. He made for his bed in the kitchen, and sat there looking tense. Mandy stayed near him for a while, fretting, then walked uneasily into the hallway and picked up the phone to dial Sarah Grace’s number.
‘Don’t hesitate to call,’ Ellen’s daughter had said in her note. Now was the time to find out some truths. What really happened to your mother? Mandy wanted to ask. Did she ever report anything strange about this house?
Another question had begun to plague her, too. When she’d first seen the asking price Sarah Grace had put on her mother’s former home, Mandy had been too bowled over by her good fortune to think twice about it. Even after seeing the place, she hadn’t questioned why someone in her position on the property ladder could possibly afford it. But now she wondered. Why had Sarah Grace sold Summer Cottage so cheap? Did she know something?
But Mandy hung up the phone before she’d even finished dialling. How could she ask those things without being taken for a lunatic? And if Sarah did know anything, she was hardly likely to admit it to her.
She did need help, though, and fast. She ran to the study, glancing nervously up and down the passage. Her skin crawled with the feeling that, everywhere she went in the house, she was being watched. She quickly turned on the computer, brought up the Google search box and keyed in the words ‘paranormal investigator cotswolds’. She hit Enter. The search results flashed up, showing only one name. A few clicks later, Mandy was looking at the website of one Claire Baker, based not too far away in Stow on the Wold and offering services to clients who believed they were being affected by “phenomena that seem to defy rational explanation”. Ms Baker claimed several years’ experience in investigating hauntings and other paranormal activity across south and central England. Her photo showed a benevolent-looking woman in her late forties or early fifties, with short reddish hair and the puffy face of someone with a long-term weight problem.
Mandy hastily scribbled down the woman’s phone number. Email wasn’t quick enough for what she had in mind.
The feeling in the house was getting stronger. As if the unseen watchers were everywhere, circling her, moving in closer with each passing moment. She couldn’t bear it any more. ‘Come on, Buster,’ she called, throwing open the kitchen door. ‘We’re going.’
She locked the cottage and ran back to the car with the dog at her heels, dived into the Kia and sped away, fog-lights cutting twin swathes through the ponderous mist. She drove for miles further out into the countryside, putting distance between her and Summer Cottage. The feeling of relief for having got away from the place should have been immense, but she couldn’t escape the sense of dread that seemed to hang on her, on her clothes, her hair, like a putrid stink.
The layby she pulled up in was off a deserted country road. She reached into her bag for her mobile phone, little used since moving to Summer Cottage and somehow a comforting reminder of her life before coming to this place. In the darkness of the car she pressed Claire Baker’s number into the tiny glowing keys and made the call.
Dial tone.