“Martin—” he started to say, but Martin himself spoke at the same time, loudly, sitting up tensely in his chair and turning to the strange boy.
“What d’you want?” he cried. “What you come here for?”
Kevin was shifting himself next to David, making himself look small and inconspicuous, like he did in class. Martin’s face was twisted and full of hate.
“Just wanted to see—” began the strange boy, but his dry rustling voice was drowned by a scream from the TV. David flicked a sideways look at the screen: a man with a stocking mask had burst into the kitchen. There was a blur in the sound, as if two pieces of film had been joined carelessly, and then the camera was suddenly inside the kitchen with them.
“Martin!” cried David.
“What’s the matter?” shouted Martin. He was shaking, glaring at the screen, staring wildly, gripping the remote control. “You scared? You seen enough?” He pressed the volume switch, and terrible sounds flooded the room. David put his hands over his ears. Kevin was still watching, but he’d curled up very small, and he was holding his fists in front of his mouth.
And the strange boy was still gazing at the screen. The woman was speaking, gabbling desperately, and the boy’s eyes followed her and his lips moved with her words.
“Shut up!” Martin yelled. “Shut up!”
He jumped up and dropped the remote control. The picture faded at once, and the last thing David saw was Martin’s face, wet with sweat.
They were in darkness.
No one moved.
David heard Martin gulping and breathing heavily. He felt sick with fear and shame.
The strange boy said, “It ain’t finished.”
“Shut up!” said Martin fiercely. “Get out!”
“I can’t till it’s finished. I always see the end.”
“What you want to watch it for?”
“I always watch it. That’s the only time I see her. I like seeing my mum.”
In the darkness his voice sounded more than ever distant, and cold, and strange. David’s skin was crawling. Everything was horrible. It had been horrible all day, but this was worse than anything. He thought of his own mum, and nearly sobbed out loud, but stifled it just in time.
“And the baby.” The strange boy spoke again. “It’s a nice baby, ain’t it? It looks nice. It must be nice being picked up like that, like what she does. I wish I could remember.”
“What d’you mean?” said Martin hoarsely.
The boy’s voice was even quieter now: hardly more than dead leaves falling.
“They killed her and then they set fire to the house. It all burnt up, the baby and all. That was me, that was, that baby. I burnt up all with my mum. But I didn’t stop growing up, getting older, like. It must be the video. Sort of kept me going. I seen it hundreds of times. The best bit is where she picks me up. I reckon she must have loved me a lot. That’s all I do, watch that video. There ain’t nothing else . . .”
He stopped.
Martin stumbled to the door and felt for the light-switch. The room sprang into being around them, all solid and bright, but there was no-one else there. Only a sharp, distant smell remained, and that dwindled after a moment and then vanished completely as if it had never existed. The boy was gone.
My Beautiful House
Louis de Berniéres
Location: Abbots Notwithstanding, Surrey.
Time: December, 2004.
Eyewitness Account: “The house is alive. It watches over me always, and it’s watching me now as I sit here, not feeling the cold, looking at it from the end of the garden . . .”
Author: Louis de Bernières (1954–) has been named one of the most outstanding British novelists of his generation and the international success of his novel, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (1994), has transformed his life. Born in London, he joined the Army but dropped out of the 2nd Queen’s Dragoon Guards and led something of a hippie lifestyle in countless jobs – including mechanic, motorcycle messenger and gaucho in Argentina – before succeeding as a writer. Supplementing his income restoring old guitars and mandolins, he hit on the idea of writing about the German and Italian occupying forces on the Greek island of Cephalonia. The story of the troubled captain was the result and apart from generating huge sales, was made into a movie and turned the island into a tourist hot spot. With each of his subsequent works, de Bernieres has set himself a new challenge: most recently delving into the ghost story genre with “Mrs Mac” (1997) and “My Beautiful House” written for The Times in December 2004. It is a wonderfully evocative, beautifully crafted and chilling tale in the very best supernatural tradition and proves, if any such proof is necessary, that the ghost story is alive and well and certain to hold its interest for readers as successfully in the 21st century as it has done in the past one. No doubt developing, entertaining and surprising us all, too.
I love it at Christmas. I just sit here at the end of the garden on top of Ithe rockery, like a garden gnome. I don’t find the stones uncomfortable. I sit here and look at the house. It’s very beautiful, I always did think so. I grew up here, and I am still here now, although I spend much of my time out in the garden just looking.
Other people may not think it beautiful, but it’s beautiful to me mainly because I always loved it. I loved my childhood in this house, and I loved it when I had to go abroad on military service, because it represented everything I was fighting for, and I loved it when I came back to Notwithstanding from Korea, and settled into the life I was born to. Here is the clump of bamboos behind which I used to conceal myself when playing hide and seek with my brothers and sister. Further up there on the left is a bird-table that I made when I was at school. It’s amazing that it hasn’t rotted away by now. The lawn isn’t very smooth, there’s too much couch grass, but we used to set up a putting green on it in the summer, and it ruined my father’s scores at the real golf course because he kept hitting the ball a long way past the hole. Here is the big apple tree that was so easy to climb, and produced great Bramleys that my mother made into pies. One year we tried to make cider, but it was very sharp. We had rabbits in the orchard, in a big wire enclosure that was movable. They kept the grass mown if you remembered to move the cage around. Of course they’d escape quite often by burrowing underneath, and they’d go and raid the vegetable patch, but they came when you called them anyway. The cage started life as a chicken run, but we found them too ill-natured. There used to be a modest fruit cage just here as well, and I often had to go into it to free the robins and blackbirds that got stuck inside. They would fly about in a silly panic, and didn’t know you were trying to be helpful. “Funny kind of fruit-cage,” my father used to say. “Keeps birds in instead of out.”
The house isn’t very old. It’s Edwardian, and it’s made of nice red brick with tiles coming half way down the walls, in the Surrey farmhouse style. I remember when the Virginia creeper and the wistaria were planted, and now they’re all over the walls. I don’t know who the architect was, but it’s a very conventional design. Most of the other family houses around here are quite similar. The first people to live here came down from the North. I think they were in textiles. Then it belonged to a writer who was quite famous in his time, but now no one’s even heard of him. Then it belonged to a retired naval officer and his wife, and then it was ours. I have so many happy memories. I don’t ever want to leave.
Inside there were about five bedrooms. My parents had the one at the back. Mine was above the kitchen. Every morning the smell of frying eggs and sausages would get me out of bed in a good mood. My room wasn’t big, but it was big enough for my model aeroplanes to hang from the ceiling on string, and for my toy soldiers to have decent-sized battles. I had a little cannon that worked on a spring, and you could put ball-bearings or matches into it, pull back the lever, release it, and mow down the troops. When I grew up I would find little ball-bearings all over the place.