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  “We can explore too, before they get here. Won’t that be fun? A real adventure.”

  She tried so hard to keep positive.

  As we walked, I looked over her shoulder. A part of me said not to, to bury my face instead. I always knew, you see, when a spirit was close by. I’m a ‘sensitive’. That’s the term for someone like me – who can sense a spirit, but can’t always see them. But that day I did see someone, standing in the garden beyond, through the trees and the hedges, most of them winter bare. It was just a fleeting glimpse, one that most people would dismiss, but not me. It was a man, not a child, although, as you know by now, there are children here. He was tall and dressed in dark clothing – as unwelcoming as the house. He had a sneer on his face, I was sure of it, and an expression in his eyes I don’t want to think about – even now.

  Tears – yet more of them – rolled down my cheeks. As Mum opened the car boot the rain became heavier, as if the weather was mourning alongside me.

  The date was December 2nd 1999. December was always a bad month in that house – when most things happened, when the worst thing happened. But that would be in years to come. We lived there until 2003. We couldn’t stay for 2004. Even Mum agreed with that, no matter how low the rent. Even so, I had years to endure; years that are burnt into my memory. I’m twenty-two now (no ‘almost’ about it) and I’ve told this story to no one, not even my closest friends, Ruby, Theo and Ness. They know nothing about Blakemort, let alone my experiences there and how receptive I was during that time. But now… now I have to say something, on paper at least. There’s an urge to get it straight in my head – all that happened.

  It’s fair to say that when you have a psychic ability, demons can haunt you. They’re attracted to you because of that ability and it’s hard to persuade them to let go, in some cases nigh on impossible. In many ways, that house is my demon. Although I left it just before I was ten, like so many others, I’m still there. I keep laughing, keep smiling, following the advice of my mother, but it’s becoming harder.

  That house… that damned house. Will it ever stop haunting me?

  Blakemort Chapter Two

  Despite Carol having departed only two weeks before, the house had a musty smell to it. Whilst not a stench, it was obtrusive, growing stronger as you climbed upwards. But first, the downstairs – Mum said, ‘Let’s explore’ and so we did.

  From the car I’d retrieved a bag of teddies that I usually slept with – three of them in total, each one the equivalent of a comfort blanket. I clutched that bag to my chest, needing all the comfort I could get. Mum inserted the key Carol had sent her into the front door, wiggled it slightly, and pushed it open – rather than a creak, it seemed to groan. Immediately inside was a lobby, meant for muddy boots and hanging coats. Beyond that was the hall, which seemed vast to me, like a cavern, although you must remember that at the time I was small. It was also empty – just a wooden chair placed forlornly in one corner and a side table on which sat an earthenware jug, a few sprigs of crumbling dried lavender placed within it. A chandelier hung from the beamed ceiling – not a twinkly one made from glass, this was blackened iron, hard and unyielding. The walls were panelled in a dark hardwood and beneath me, the floorboards were dark too, almost black. I took it all in, whilst trying to stop from shaking. Mum was right about one thing: you could scooter in there easily enough.

  “Come on, there’s a parlour to our left,” Mum enthused.

  “A parlour, what’s that?” asked Ethan.

  “A kind of reception room,” Mum answered, “where you greet guests.”

  “Are we going to have guests?”

  “I hope so, Ethan. We’re a little out in the sticks, but you never know.”

  There was a pair of heavy green silk curtains at the window in the parlour, which rustled slightly as we entered and another empty sideboard. A painting on the wall of rolling hills caught in the moonlight should have been pleasant but instead it was eerie, and also slightly crooked. Mum noticed too and went to straighten it but when we left the room, I looked back – it was crooked again. To the right of the lobby was a similar sized room – ‘the morning room’ Mum announced, giggling.

  More wooden beams weighed heavily over us in the drawing room but at least it had a decent amount of furniture, including two big squashy sofas, their red material more of a faded pink and an even more washed-out rug lying in-between them. The dining room was also furnished with a long refectory table, gnarled in several places, and six chairs. To the back of the house was the music room. This was the room with the bay windows and that door, the one with the black surround.

  Ethan started complaining because it had no instruments in it.

  “Where are the guitars?”

  “Guitars?” Mum answered good-naturedly enough. “It would have had a piano in it, Ethan, not guitars. Maybe we ought to get one, it’d be fun to have singsongs in here wouldn’t it, like they did in the old days. Can you imagine…?”

  As she said it, her voice trailed off. I noticed she wasn’t laughing, giggling, or smiling – she actually seemed uneasy. Could it be that like me she realised the music room was not meant for lingering in, for having a ‘singsong’? It was a gathering place certainly, but not for the likes of us.

  Almost pushing my brother and me out of there, we entered the kitchen instead – located in the long stem of the L. Not small and cosy, it was large, industrial even, with orange, brown, and cream lino covering the floor in a busy pattern that hurt your eyes. The cupboards consisted of yet more dark wood and the cream worktop had significantly yellowed in places. Looking around, Mum had her ‘happy’ face back on.

  “Isn’t it wonderful?” she declared. “Look how many windows there are! On sunny days it’ll be a joy to have breakfast in here.”

  Ethan muttered something vaguely supportive, whilst I clutched my teddies harder. I couldn’t forget the music room and how all eyes – no matter that they were unseen – had been trained on me, sensing the one that could sense them. As for the windows in the kitchen, they looked out onto the garden – not a sight I wanted to see again, especially if that man was still present. I imagined him drifting closer on silent feet, peering in through the glass, the look in his eyes intensifying. I yelped.

  “What is it, darling, are you all right?”

  Before I could answer, my brother pushed past me and almost knocked me off my feet. Mum steadied me then followed after him, calling for me to follow. It was time to venture upstairs. Back in the hall, we started climbing, Mum and Ethan clinging to the bannister. I couldn’t because of my teddies, but I didn’t want to touch it anyway or think about who’d run their hands up and down it previously.

  As I’ve said, the musty smell was stronger upstairs. Even now, after so many years away, I can smell it. In the lonely reaches of the night when sleep plays hard to get, it drifts towards me, finds its way in, and settles alongside the coldness.

  There were five bedrooms in total on the first floor, and my brother darted in and out of each one, wanting to lay claim to the best, although Mum just laughed and told him she was the one entitled to the best. Surprisingly, most of the bedrooms were actually quite small, not grand at all, with beds in only three of them and random items of furniture stored in the other two. Apparently Carol had lived there on her own, as she wasn’t married and had no children. Being alone in that house is a thought I find abhorrent – to be the only living person. As we edged towards the room above the music room – the master bedroom – I continued to drag my feet.

  Don’t want that room! Don’t want that room!

  I didn’t want to go anywhere near it. The atmosphere was heavier on the approach, like wading through treacle.

  “This is my room!” Mum declared and I wilted. Sometimes I would wake in the night and when I did, I’d creep in with her and Dad – lately with just her of course – but I wouldn’t be able to do that anymore. The floor between rooms was no barrier to what was downstairs – they’d drift upwards
easily enough and tower over me whilst I slept; so many of them, far too many. Oh, the tears! They were drowning me.

  Mum noticed me loitering in the doorway.

  “Come on, come in!”

  I stood perfectly still.

  “Come on,” she said again.

  Ethan, who was at the window, turned his head and sneered – I imagined the look on his face to be the same as that of the man in the garden.

  I was about to shake my head and tell her no, when I felt a hand at the base of my spine. I tensed, knew to brace myself but it was no use. The hand drew back and then slammed into me with such force that I flew forwards, landing heavily on my knees, the threadbare carpet offering no cushion at all and my bag flying.

  “Oh, darling, did you trip?” Mum was beside me in an instant.

  “I was pushed!” I wailed.

  “Don’t be silly, Ethan’s nowhere near you.”

  “Not by Ethan!”

  Mum set me on my feet again and gathered my teddies. “Perhaps you tripped over those laces of yours, are they undone?”

  She asked the question but didn’t bother to check, she just hugged me to her. Behind me, I could hear a faint trace of laughter.

  “Let’s choose your room!” Mum suggested. It was a mercy to be led away from hers, albeit a small one. “Which one of those that we’ve seen do you like?”

  Ethan had already chosen the one nearest to Mum’s but that was all right, I didn’t want it anyway. I think Mum was surprised when I chose the furthest.

  “I’m not sure,” she said, looking around. It was also small, perhaps the smallest of the five. A frown marred her pretty features, “I think you should be closer to me.”

  “I want this one!”

  “But—”

  “Please.” There was no mistaking the desperation in my voice.

  She looked at me, scrutinised me even. After a moment she bent down so that we were eye-level. Placing her hands on my cheeks, her thumbs drying my tears, she said, “We’ll be happy here, I promise. I’ll do my level best to ensure that we are.”

  I didn’t know what the word ‘ensure’ meant then or what ‘level best’ was but I got the gist regardless – she was saying we’d be okay, that I wasn’t to be upset. But she was wrong, so very wrong. And my room, whilst not as bad as hers, was still alive. All the rooms were, as was the house itself.

  It lived alongside the dead.

  Blakemort Chapter Three

  We didn’t have time to go to the attic as the removal van pulled up, the driver honking the horn to indicate his arrival.

  “Never mind,” said Mum, “Carol said not to bother anyway, it’s only used for storage, it’s not habitable or anything. Perhaps we shouldn’t go poking around in her belongings anyway. It doesn’t seem right somehow.”

  Remembering how black the eaves windows had appeared from the back of the house, how secretive, I was glad as I was honestly not sure how much more I could bear.

  Mum was occupied with directing the men to put what furniture where. Ethan had grabbed his scooter and was getting in everyone’s way as they trudged to and fro, Mum shouting at him on several occasions to stop what he was doing and help – not that he did of course. I tried to keep close to Mum but she got irritated with me too and sat me on one of the sofas in the drawing room, telling me in her stern voice to stay put. I drew my legs up and huddled into the corner, doing my utmost not to notice that there was a depression in the cushion to the right of me. Instead I buried my face in my teddies, breathed in their familiar smell, and closed my eyes.

  How long I sat like that I don’t know but there came a cry from one of the removal men followed by a rush of expletives – or ‘bad words’ as I used to call them back then. I opened my eyes and listened as Mum’s voice added to the mix, asking the man over and over again if he was all right and apologised profusely. I’d been told to stay put but I couldn’t. A naturally inquisitive child, I had to go and see what was happening. The man – Mum called him Greg – was lying in a heap at the bottom of the staircase, clutching his ankle.

  “Who left that bloody toy on the stair? It wasn’t there when I went up!”

  It was one of my dolls.

  “Oh, dear, oh, dear,” Mum was bending down, trying to tend to his ankle, but he wouldn’t let her touch it. “It must have fallen out of one of the boxes.” She then corrected herself. “I don’t see how though, they’re all sealed with parcel tape.”

  “Your kid must have dropped it!”

  Mum bristled. “My kid, as you call her, is in the drawing room.”

  “Your other kid then!”

  “It’s a doll. My other ‘kid’ doesn’t play with dolls.”

  “No, he’s on the bleedin’ scooter, getting in our way!”

  Another man appeared on the scene and interrupted. “Come on, Greg, get over it, you’ve not broken anything. We’ve got to get on, we’ve got another job to get to.”

  The other man helped Greg up whilst Mum stood by, her lips clamped together to prevent her from saying anything more. When they moved away she darted forward and grabbed the doll, holding it in her hands and staring at it, clearly confused as to how it got there. It was Annie – a rag doll, and I’d seen Mum pack her away, stored for the journey right at the bottom of one of those boxes. As I stared I thought I could hear laughter again, an echo of it, but it held no humour, quite the opposite.

  I remained standing in the doorway. Mum was distracted so she didn’t notice me anyway but I felt safer there, away from that sofa and whoever it was sitting beside me. When everything was in and placed in the right rooms, Mum settled the bill with the removal men. They almost snatched the money out of her hand, hurrying from the house as fast as they could, Greg the only one to look back over his shoulder, his complexion much greyer than when he’d entered the house.

  Later that evening, Mum cooked dinner for us and then complained when I wouldn’t eat, but only half-heartedly, being too exhausted to insist otherwise. Instead, she cleared the plates and suggested we all get ready for bed, asking me and Ethan if we’d like to sleep in with her – ‘a first night treat’, she described it. ‘All of us together.’ Ethan promptly said no and disappeared to his own room and I just started crying again. The thought of being alone in any room in that house was awful but worse still was being in her room, even if she was sleeping right beside me.

  Having helped me to wash and change into my pyjamas she took me to my room, not quite believing that I too had refused her. I never had before. I begged her to stay with me until I fell asleep and she agreed – lying beside me and stroking my hair. I think she was humming a tune as well, a Christmas hymn. For some reason it annoyed me, but only vaguely. Like her I was too tired to care that much. Even so, oblivion took a long while to come simply because I was trying to force it, but the next thing I remember was waking with bright sunlight filtering in through the flimsy curtains that fluttered at the window despite none being open. I’d made it to morning! A tiny glimmer of hope began to build as I sat and looked around. The only things in my room were the things that were supposed to be there: my dolls, my dolls’ house, my teddies, my clothes, a chest of drawers, a wardrobe, a desk, the bed and me. I was so grateful for that fact I started smiling – a big grin spreading across my face. Of course, being older and wiser, I know that it takes an enormous amount of energy for spirits to do what they’d done the day we moved in – manifest in the garden, push me in the back, make a doll materialise from out of nowhere, whisper and laugh. In-between they’d need to rest, recuperate. That’s regarding the spirits. Regarding the house, it was a different beast entirely. It was constant, ever watchful. It watched me as I grinned in relief and so my grin quickly faded. That house – it despised us. So vividly that word formed in my mind.

  “Mum,” I asked a few hours later as we were unpacking stuff from boxes, trying to find a space for everything, with only Mum venturing into the music room to position a vase here or an occasional table there, �
��what does despise mean?”

  She stopped unwrapping what was in her hands – another vase I think – and looked at me with something akin to horror. “Despise? That’s a horrible word, where did you learn that?” Before I could answer, her nostrils started flaring and her lips pursed. “It’s Ethan isn’t it? Honestly, that boy, wait ’til I get hold of him.”

  She placed the vase back on the floor, stood up, and started shouting his name. Immediately I jumped up and tugged at her skirt.

  “It’s not him, Mum. I just… know it.”

  She turned her head sideways to look at me. “How do you just know it?”

  I shrugged.

  She seemed to consider my words and then knelt again, resumed what she’d been doing. “Like I said, it’s a horrible word, mean and nasty.”

  “But what does it mean?” I asked again, refusing to give up.

  “It’s… well, it’s the opposite of love.”

  “Hate?”

  Mum didn’t answer; she just nodded her head.

  Having had confirmation, I realised it was no real surprise. I’d gathered as much.

  * * *

  There are so many incidents similar to those I’ve described that happened at the house; toys that went missing, only to turn up somewhere else, snippets of voices talking that weren’t ours, glimpses of those that hovered near. There was a lot of bad luck too. The vase Mum had placed in the music room was one of her favourites, yet one morning she came down to find it lying on the floor, smashed to pieces. Little things also counted, food got burnt easily, the heating behaved erratically – it was either too high, roasting us, or refusing to come on at all. The hot water would run cold, despite the immersion being switched on hours beforehand. Mum grew more and more frustrated, kept muttering that ‘no wonder the rent was cheap, nothing bloody works’ but not once did she acknowledge any reason for it other than a mechanical one – and how could I tell her differently? I didn’t have the words to explain at that age, and secondly, she’d never have believed me – she didn’t want to believe.