Dark Tides (6 page)

An hour later, I was all about the singing. My pockets were weighed down with coins, I was carrying an old ice-cream tub filled with sweets, and I’d eaten so much sugar that I could feel a dull ache in my gums. My lips were sticky, my palms gooey, and I had a toothy, half-crazed smile on my face.

It was getting late. Already half an hour past my bedtime and Mum hadn’t mentioned heading home yet. That was more than fine by me. I was perfectly happy to work my doorstep routine as many times as possible.

Or at least I was, until it finally dawned on me that Mum had been steering me towards the one place I really didn’t want to go.

The house frightened me. It always had. Perhaps the effect should have been worse in the dark of Hop-tu-naa, but the truth is I could have been standing in front of the Caine mansion on a bright and warm summer’s day and I’d still have experienced the same penetrating chill, the same pulsing sense of unease, as if the ground was slowly stirring beneath my feet or the forces of gravity had been subtly but undeniably altered.

It wasn’t just the scale of the place – which was vast and daunting – or the drab grey exterior, or the signs on the towering entrance gates that read:
PRIVATE ESTATE
.
TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED
. It wasn’t that the grounds were uncared for, the borders overgrown, and it wasn’t the sense that something unsightly was concealed here behind the double front doors and the recessed windows with their blackened glass and yellowing net curtains.

No, the reason I feared this place was far more simple. I knew I wasn’t welcome.

Mum worked here as Edward Caine’s personal assistant, bookkeeper and household manager. It was the same job she’d held before she’d moved off-island with Dad in the year before I was born. Back then, it had been a live-in position, but things change, and now that arrangement was out of the question. Mr Caine had been prepared for Dad to move into the guest cottage with Mum, but not for a child to live there, too. Dad had been pleased about that. He preferred for us to have our own place, even if it was cramped and riddled with woodworm and damp. Good for Dad. There was no doubt in my mind that I would have died of fright if I’d been made to live there.

Visiting was bad enough. After a couple of months back on the island, Dad had landed a job with a removals company, and on those occasions when Mr Caine needed Mum to work beyond the end of the school day, I was forced to join her. In the beginning, it had only happened once a week or so, but it wasn’t long before Mr Caine started to insist on Mum working late much more often. She was often harried, often under pressure, and he was constantly pushing her to do more.

Sometimes he telephoned to ask her to return to work in the evening or to show up earlier than normal the following morning. Dad didn’t like it but Mum would still go. She told him we needed the money and I could tell that her words contained an unspoken criticism, as if Dad had failed us in some mysterious way. I never understood it. We weren’t rich like Mr Caine – there were toys I couldn’t always have, holidays we couldn’t afford to go on – but we weren’t poor, either. There were kids in my class at school who were much worse off. There were some who couldn’t afford uniforms and others who came to school hungry because there was no breakfast at home. And before we’d moved back to the island, money had never seemed to be an issue. Maybe I was too young to notice, but I think it’s more likely that it wasn’t something my parents were bothered by. All they used to care about was spending time with each other, and if things had changed, I couldn’t begin to imagine why.

The one thing I did know for sure was that during the past fortnight I’d been inside the Caine mansion seven times. As far as I was concerned, it was seven times too many, and tonight I’d finally had my fill of it.

Being shoved forwards in the Halloween black, I glared at the structure and could almost imagine it glaring back. The walls seemed alive in some alien way, the windows like dark unblinking eyes. It was a place made for nightmares. A shambling, teetering relic, filled with too many rooms and too many hidden, unlit spaces.

‘I want to go home.’

Mum positioned me in front of the imposing double doors. The turnip lantern had burned out some time ago and now it looked a lot like a shrunken head on a string.

‘You can go home once Mr Caine has seen your costume. He’s been looking forward to it.’

‘No, he hasn’t. He hates me.’

‘
Claire.
’

‘He does. I don’t want to sing for him. I’m tired. I want to go home.’

Mum snatched at my wrist and hauled me round. ‘Don’t you misbehave, young lady. Don’t you dare let me down.’

‘I didn’t want to come here.’

She blinked. Her lip trembled and for just a moment I saw the sadness well up in her again – the slackening of the muscles in her face, the glassiness in her eyes – and I finally understood that I was the one responsible for it. Me. I made her this way.

‘Well, you’re here now. And you’ll behave. Or else.’

Yes, I wanted to tell her. I would behave. I’d make amends. But I didn’t get the chance. Mum was still shaking my arm, the tribal turnip head spinning slowly in the dark, my bin-bag dress shimmying in a desperate rustle, as one of the huge black doors opened in front of me.

I turned slowly.

Edward Caine loomed in the doorway.

‘Well,’ he said in his reedy, drawn voice, ‘who have we here? A
witch
, I think. Yes, I can see your wand. So you’re a sorceress, I imagine.’

Mum lifted my arm and forced me to wave my wand in a sequence of stiff, jerking sweeps.

‘So . . .’ he said, then waited.

I raised my head, looking up past his long, skeletal legs, his spindly fingers and bony arms, up past his concave chest and scrawny, chicken-flesh neck, towards his wasted face. His skin was badly parched and deeply folded. He reminded me, not for the first time, of an alien creature that lacked the energy to fully shed his old husk. He had liver spots on one temple and his silvery hair, fine as spider’s silk, was combed into a side parting over his speckled scalp.

I didn’t know how old he was at the time. To my mind, he was beyond ancient. I wonder now if I would have been surprised to be told that he was only sixty-one. Probably not. A sixteen-year-old was an adult to me back then. Somebody in their twenties was middle-aged. A guy in his sixties? You might as well have had the undertaker on speed-dial.

I delayed for as long as I could. Then I gave in and finally met his eyes.

They were round and bulging. Amphibian, somehow. The whites were a damp, sickly yellow, the pupils like shattered marbles. When he blinked, the skin of his eyelids seemed to be stretched so thin that it was almost sheer.

‘Aren’t you going to sing?’ There was a dry background rasp to his voice that sounded as tired and desiccated as his skin. ‘I was told you would sing.’

I leaned to one side and eyed the entrance hall behind him, dimly lit by a series of brass wall sconces. It was dominated by a grand central staircase with a wine-red carpet that swept up to a high ornate balcony. The balcony fascinated me. Terrified me, too. Especially tonight.

Not for the first time, I half expected to see the ghost of a beautiful young woman appear in a lace nightdress, her outline throbbing with a gauzy, spectral lustre. She’d raise her arms and begin to hover. She’d glide out over the banister, then pause, look up to the heavens, clutch her hands to her breast, and drop. She’d plummet straight down towards the Persian rug that covered the parquet floor and vanish in an instant, leaving nothing behind but a milky puddle of ectoplasm.

‘Have you forgotten the words?’ Mr Caine asked, and in his voice was a special kind of mocking that he reserved solely for me.

I was still staring at the balcony but I sensed something stirring in me.

‘Imagine,’ he went on, ‘a witch without a spell. On Hop-tu-naa, too. I was led to believe that you’d been rehearsing.’

I felt my toes curl inside my plimsolls. My hands clenched into fists.

This wasn’t a song any more. It was a weapon. A curse.

My singing was slower than usual, my diction clear and precise. I loaded the words with venom.

Mum shifted beside me, the twine of the turnip lantern creaking. Her fingers dug into my wrist.

It was working. I could tell. Mr Caine had rocked backwards on his heels. His bulbous eyes blazed down at me.

I experienced an overwhelming sensation of power. The fierce spite crackled in my veins. My witchy tongue writhed with malice.

And that was when I saw something move in the shadows at the rear of the entrance hall. It was Morgan, Mr Caine’s only son.

He wasn’t dressed in a costume. He was wearing a towelling dressing gown, belted around his slim waist. He was a year older than me and easily a stone lighter. I’d only seen him twice before – had only spoken with him once very briefly. We were forbidden to play together. As far as I knew, Morgan wasn’t allowed to play with anyone at all.

He was educated at home by a private tutor. Mum had told me that it was because he had some incredibly rare illness that messed with his glands. She’d said he could get sick very easily, for the strangest reasons. If he got excited, say, if he suffered even the slightest shock or surprise, he could fall into a coma and die. That’s why I had to behave and keep my voice down whenever I was inside the house. It was why I always had to stay in the same room as Mum. Why I was never allowed to explore on my own.

And there was something else I knew. Something more. Mr Caine’s much younger wife – Morgan’s mother – was dead. She’d suffered from a glandular complaint, too. It had made her light-headed and prone to collapse. A little over a year ago, she’d fainted up on the balcony, toppled over the carved railings and been killed in a tragic fall.

I faltered, the words snagging in my throat.

Morgan’s gaunt face was half in and half out of the light, the lone eye that I could see bulging from its socket like those of his father. It gazed out at me. Unblinking. Unseeing. Almost as if he hadn’t heard me at all.

I fell silent, the last unspoken line left hanging in the waiting air.

Mum’s shoe scraped wet tarmac. She was forcing my arm up, pulling it half out of its socket, so that it felt as if I was straining to answer a teacher’s question in class.

Mr Caine raised a wispy eyebrow. He was daring me to finish, willing me to disgrace myself completely. And normally I might have taken that dare. I might have delivered the final wicked blow, no matter the consequences.

But Morgan was there. Poor, gormless Morgan. And as I stared desperately at his blameless face, I felt that I couldn’t do it.

Mr Caine’s tongue flicked out from his mouth like a lizard’s. He seemed to taste my shame on the air. Then he turned very quickly and tracked my gaze.

But Morgan slipped backwards before his father could spot him, returning to the darkness under the stairs.
He isn’t supposed to be watching
, I realised.
He’s not allowed to be here
.

And then I understood something else. Hop-tu-naa was forbidden to him. A night of scares. A night of shocks. How could he possibly be allowed to participate in that? So he’d sneaked downstairs to wait for me and to watch from the dark. To experience, through me, the thrill of going out and singing in people’s doorways.

And how had I rewarded him? By being bitter and petty and mean. By revelling in the sorry, messy death of his mother.

I couldn’t take back what I’d done, but I wasn’t about to betray him. Wrenching my hand free from Mum’s grip, I took one fast step forwards and stamped my feet on the cold ground.

Mr Caine spun back.

I held out my hand, palm up.

Mr Caine blinked slowly, his eyelids dragging over his bulbous eyes. ‘But you didn’t finish your song.’

I curled my fingers in a gimme gesture.

‘Claire.’ Mum’s tone was sharp. ‘Don’t be so rude.’

I kept looking up at Mr Caine. Kept waiting. He wasn’t going to give in but I wouldn’t be beaten. I drew a breath and spoke in a low whisper.

The damp air buffeted against me, crinkling my bin-bag dress, and in my mind, I pictured an immense force whipping and whirling around me tornado-fast, the air sparking and crackling, as if I’d delivered the last line of an ancient spell.

Looking back now, I can see that I’d done something every bit as powerful, though far more destructive than I could possibly have known. Maybe it
was
magic, in a way. Maybe I did conjure up some kind of evil spirit. But if that’s true, it’s only because I succumbed to the darkness inside myself.

Mr Caine considered me for a long moment without moving. Then his lips formed a strange kind of smile that wasn’t really a smile at all.

‘That’s right. Very good. You’ve sung your little song, and now I must fulfil my side of the bargain. Isn’t that right?’

He slipped a hand into his pocket and removed a banknote between two bony fingers, his eyes probing me as he pressed the twenty-pound note into my palm.

‘Don’t spend it all at once.’

I stared down at the note in silence as Mum gathered herself beside me.

‘That’s very generous of you, Mr Caine.’ She pulled me back by my shoulder, the turnip lantern knocking into me. ‘But really, I’m not sure—’

‘I’m sure, Mrs Cooper. Quite sure. Goodnight to you, young Claire. Thank you for sharing your . . . song.’

He stepped back and started to swing the door closed.