Frost Hollow Hall (11 page)

‘You all right, Gracie?’ I said, trying to sound steady.

‘She’ll live,’ said Cook, grabbing the broom from Gracie and pushing her towards me. ‘But take her up to bed before Mrs Jessop hears all this wailing.’

I said a silent thank you. Cook mightn’t want to talk about ghosts, but I blinking well did. Once I’d got Gracie on her own, I’d ask her what had really been going on.

‘C’mon then.’ I tucked my arm through hers. ‘You’ll have to show me the way, though.’

But Gracie wasn’t shifting. ‘I in’t going up them back stairs without a candle.’

‘For goodness’ sake. You’ve been up and down ’em hundreds of times,’ said Cook, though she took a candle from a drawer and lit it. ‘And don’t you go filling Tilly’s head with your daft ideas.’

Far too late for that.

Cook put the candle in a tin holder and handed it to me. ‘Turn right out of the kitchen and keep walking ’til you reach the back stairs. Then it’s all the way to the top.’

We set off down the passage. Gracie’s hand trembled on my arm and she was breathing quick and shallow.

‘Bet you think I’m a right baby to be so scared,’ she said.

‘’Course not.’

Though I wondered how anyone could be this fearful of Kit Barrington.

‘I in’t normally like this,’ said Gracie. ‘But something’s started up these last few nights. And it in’t just the china. I’ve sensed someone following me up to bed.’

A little thrill ran through me. We stopped at the foot of the stairs.

‘You go first,’ she said, pushing me forward.

The stone steps went up steeply. To me, it was just another dark passageway, and this house was full of them.

‘Come on, then,’ I said.

I held the candle out in front and, gathering my skirts, took the steps two at a time. I didn’t see the point in lingering. As we made our way upwards, the darkness grew thicker, blacker. It seemed to smother what little light our candle gave off. Out the corner of my eye, I saw strange, creeping shadows on the walls. Any excitement I’d felt began to ebb away. A shiver ran down my back, though I hardly knew why. There was no reason to be scared.

‘Slow down, can’t you?’ Gracie called, as I reached the first landing. She’d fallen quite a way behind. As she caught up, she seized my arm.

‘Don’t you go leaving me,’ she said.

‘Keep up, then,’ I said, peevishly. ‘We in’t on a Sunday stroll.’

Another flight up and of a sudden, the air turned icy cold. It set me off shivering so hard it was a job to hold the candle straight. Gracie was right behind me now. I heard her breathing and the scuffing of her boot soles on the steps. The shadows stretched long and monstrous on the wall beside us. I told myself they were only ours. Nothing to be frightened of.

Two shadows. One for me. One for Gracie.

My breath caught in my throat. For there weren’t two shadows, were there?

There were three.

I stopped dead. Gracie stumbled right into me.

‘Oh!’ she cried, grabbing at my arm.

‘Careful! Or we’ll fall and break our necks!’

But she clung on so tight I lost my balance and, in panic, threw out my hands to save myself. I fell against the wall and dropped the flipping candle. It went clattering down the steps, tin holder and all. It stayed lit for a moment, a little speck of light in all that darkness. Then it flickered and went out.

I hardly dared move. It made no difference if I shut or opened my eyes. The darkness was total.

‘How much further is it?’ I said to Gracie, trying very hard not to think about that third shadow. I must’ve imagined it. There was no way of knowing now.

‘We’re halfway,’ she said. ‘Reckon we should go back for a light?’

‘No. Let’s keep going.’

I laid my hand flat against the wall and felt my way slowly, one step at a time. Gracie whimpered behind me.

‘It’s all right if you go slow.’ I tried to sound calm, though I certainly didn’t feel it. ‘Just don’t grab me again.’

A few steps up, I sensed someone close behind me. Very close.

It wasn’t Gracie.

The person started whispering. Their voice was low and quick. It was impossible to make out the words. With growing horror, I smelled something too, a sickly-sweet scent like honey. I turned round.

‘Who’s there?’

The whispering stopped. Darkness pressed in on me. Then, right close to my ear, someone sighed. I felt their breath, cold and queer against my neck. I shuddered. Jumped back. My foot slipped, and suddenly I was falling backwards, grabbing madly at thin air. I fell hard on my tailbone onto what felt like a rough wood floor. It must be the landing we’d just passed. Gingerly I got to my feet, trying to ignore the pain. All was quiet as the grave.

‘Gracie?’ I called out. ‘Where are you?’

The only noise was my own echo. Gracie had vanished.

17

Talk of a Ghost

Someone was coming towards me. I prayed it was Gracie. That she’d had seen sense and gone back for a candle after all. Any second now we’d have light again. But as the footsteps drew closer, there was no light. The dark stayed thick as anything.

‘Gracie?’ I said, then went cold all over.

It
was
Gracie.
Wasn’t
it?

The footsteps sounded different. Lighter. Quicker. All I could see was darkness. I smelled it again, that sweet honey scent, and got ready to run; upstairs, downstairs, I didn’t care where.

Someone was close.

The whispering started just inches from my ear, a hissing, lisping sound that made my scalp prickle. A hand gripped my upper arm. I shrank back in horror. Tried to pull free. But the grip was fierce. Fingernails bit through the sleeve of my frock. The more I struggled, the tighter it held me, ’til I was sure my arm would be twisted clean off my body. Panic set in. Thrashing and kicking, I lashed out blindly. The grip seemed to slacken. I yanked myself free, and raced up the last flight of stairs.

At the top was another landing, where moonlight shone in through a small window in the roof. I stopped to recover myself. A few moments later, Gracie caught up with me. She looked pale and shaken.

‘What happened?’ she said, crossly. ‘One minute you was right in front of me, the next, you was gone.’

‘I didn’t go nowhere. You were the one who disappeared.’

‘Did not,’ she said. ‘I was there all the time.’

I was having trouble making sense of this. My arm hurt like hell, and tired as I was, I felt my temper snap.

‘Try a trick like that again, and I’ll thump you one, Gracie Waite!’

She blinked. ‘A trick like what?’

‘You grabbed my arm, didn’t you? And you followed me right close ’til I was scared witless. What the heck are you trying to prove?’

Her mouth fell open. She looked about to cry. ‘You felt it, didn’t you?’

‘I felt
you
, playing pranks, yes!’

‘No, Tilly, that weren’t me,’ she said. ‘What you felt must have been the ghost.’

I wanted to believe her. Or part of me did. But how could this
thing
on the stairs be Kit Barrington? He’d saved my life. And now he was desperate for me to help him. So why the heck would he want to scare me?

‘I don’t know what I felt,’ I said, eventually. ‘I just want my bed, that’s all.’

‘You don’t believe me neither, do you?’ said Gracie, all huffy. ‘And there was me thinking you might be my friend.’

Before I could answer, she marched off. I followed her down a passage and into a large, cold room. I could just make out two narrow beds either side of the chimney breast. In the corner was a chest for storing clothes. And there were my things from home, folded up in a pile next to it. It churned me over to see them again, and I felt very low indeed.

‘Gracie,’ I said.

‘I in’t speaking to you.’

She undressed and got into bed without even saying good night. I took from this that the bed nearest the window was mine. Stripping down to my shift, I slid between the icy sheets and lay still. Ever so slowly, the bed began to warm, though it did little to comfort me.

A few feet away, Gracie tossed and turned in her bed. She’d been all kindness and smiles an hour ago; now she wouldn’t even talk. When I shut my eyes, I felt those pinching fingers again, and started weeping silently into my pillow. I felt truly wretched. What a dreadful house this was! I was beginning to wish I’d never set foot in the place, and had stayed at home with Ma.

I stopped mid-sob.

Gracie was right. Something
was
wrong with Frost Hollow Hall. Never mind that there were too few servants, or that Lady Barrington kept herself hidden away. I’d known all that before. But this ghost business seemed to have started only in the last few days.

Weren’t spirits meant to haunt the place where they’d been done a terrible wrong? That’s how it worked in a penny dreadful story. Not that I believed all that, but I didn’t have much else to go on, and right now it made a sort of sense. Maybe something had happened here in the house,
and
out on that lake. Trouble was, this wasn’t some daft story that Eliza might read. This was happening in front of my very eyes.

What’s more, the ghost on the stairs had seemed spiteful. Yet the Kit I knew was as gentle as an angel. It didn’t add up that he’d turn all angry and mean, unless something had happened here to make him that way.

My head was reeling. I’d never sleep now. Eventually, I sat up.

‘Gracie?’

She didn’t answer.

‘Not asleep, are you?’

‘No.’ She still sounded cross.

‘I’m sorry I was angry with you.’

‘Huh!’

Silence.

I tried again. ‘Please, Gracie. I so want us to be friends.’

Her bedclothes rustled as she turned towards me. ‘There is some sort of spirit here. I’m not making it up. And I’m not pulling pranks.’

‘You’d better tell me what’s been happening, then.’

For ages she didn’t speak. Then she said, ‘You won’t laugh?’

‘Promise.’

‘But it scares me even to think of it.’ And she started to cry.

‘Get in with me if it’ll help,’ I said. I had to keep her talking.

Gracie padded across to my bed and climbed in. Her hair spread over the pillow, tickling against my cheek. I propped myself up on an elbow so I could just about see her outline in the dark. She lay still, her gaze fixed on the windowpane above our heads.

‘It’s been happening these last few nights.’ Her voice was shaky. ‘At first, I thought it was just me being daft. The footmen often tell spooky stories of a night in the servants’ hall, and I do get scared easy.’

I reached for her hand. ‘What’s been happening?’

‘A feeling I get. Like someone’s right behind me.’

‘On the back stairs?’

‘’Specially on them back stairs. Sometimes it’s so close I feel it breathing on me,’ she said.

My heart thudded. ‘And does it pinch you?’

She hesitated. ‘No. It don’t touch me.’

So it was just me, then
. The thought did little to steady my nerves.

‘And the broken china?’ I asked. ‘Does it scare you so much that you drop stuff?’

I felt her tense up. ‘They think it’s just me being clumsy. But I don’t drop nothing. Honest I don’t!’

‘So what happens?’

Gracie turned to face me. ‘It’s so strange, I can hardly explain it. What happens is things move by themselves.’

I shuddered. It sounded horrifying.

‘What’s doing all this, Tilly?’ she said.

Don’t ask me that
. I turned away so she couldn’t see my lying eyes. Because I couldn’t tell her. I couldn’t tell anyone. Not if I wanted to keep my job.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Only I felt it too and didn’t like it much.’

Gracie went quiet again. After a bit she said, ‘P’raps we should keep this to ourselves.’

‘I wasn’t planning on telling Mrs Jessop.’

‘No, don’t you see? It’s just . . .’ Gracie shivered. ‘Well . . . it’s all about the dead in this house. Everything is. And it in’t right.’

‘Oh?’ I thought of Samuel Ketteridge and his love songs, and the chatter in the servants’ hall. True enough, this house was a cold, shadowy place, with too few servants to run things right. But tonight at supper it had seemed happy enough.

Gracie turned away. ‘You’ll be laying fires tomorrow. You’ll meet the Barringtons. Then you’ll see what I mean.’

Dreaming: 4

The water’s clearer than before. I see every detail of Kit’s fine face. It takes my breath away. His hand takes mine. The cold of it numbs my fingers and sends an ache all the way up my arm. Slowly, gently we float towards the daylight. At the surface the ice stops us so we’re trapped like butterflies at a window. Kit lets go of me. He reaches up and pushes with all his strength. The ice doesn’t budge an inch.

His head drops, his shoulders shake. I can’t bear to see him like this.

Yet something strange is happening. There’s a handprint in the ice, at the place where Kit touched it. And now it’s gone dark like it’s starting to melt. My heart leaps. I point wildly.

‘Look!’ I cry, though he can’t hear me. ‘Look!’

He reads my face and when he turns and sees it too, the ghost of a smile appears.

18

Laying Fires

‘Get your backsides out of bed!’

I tugged the covers over my head.

‘I’m counting to three . . .’

The voice came closer. It didn’t sound like Ma.

‘All right Dorcas, we heard you.’

The warm shape next to me wasn’t Eliza either. My guts went tight as I remembered where I was.

Gracie swung her legs round and got out of bed, letting icy air in under the blankets. She fumbled in the dark for her clothes then lit the stub-end of a candle. I sat up and rubbed my eyes.

‘Time for work,’ she said, holding the little flame towards me. ‘Gawd, you look done in already!’