It was wind, wasn’t it?
‘Hello?’ she called again, every fibre of her being on high alert. She checked her phone. No signal. As she touched her bedroom door the voice of her mother whispered in the air. ‘Not my little girl.’
Sarah froze. It was the echo of a memory, that was all. But was that lavender she could smell? The lightest of touches was all that was needed for the door to creak open. The room was cloaked in darkness, but there was a person-shaped lump beneath her bed clothes. Every horror story she had ever heard came flooding into her mind. But this washerstory. She had to finish it. She gripped the candle tighter, hot wax burning her skin as she crept towards the bed. Could it be Jahmelia? She did not want to see what was beneath the blanket but was helpless to stop. As she pulled back the cover she felt awash with relief. It was a pillow, blue-black with mould.
Sarah knew she should check beneath the bed but was unable to bring herself to do it. She was just waiting for a hand to shoot out and grab her by the ankle. ‘Stay calm,’ she whispered to herself, creeping out of the room. Her persecutor wasn’t here because that wasn’t how the story went. She recalled Robin’s partly open bedroom door, and how she’d been too scared to look inside. Her young mind had completed the most horrific of puzzles. By then, she knew her funny, cute, annoying little brother was dead. She had missed him every day since. The newspapers said he had still been cuddling his teddy when he was shot. It was quick and painless. He would not have known. It was a tiny crumb of hope, but she clung to it. What sort of a monster could have ended his life? Sarah rubbed the back of her neck. It felt like the walls were closing in. If evil had a home, it was Blackhall Manor.
She recalled the battle on the landing and how her mother had fought to protect her family. Why were dark forces so prevalent here? Fear sharpened Sarah’s senses as the pipes in her father’s study rattled in discontent. She swallowed down the grief that had always held her back. But there was something else. A sense of her old life ending. Of fighting for a future which had been denied to her so far. Sweat dampened her palms as she forced herself on.
‘Jahmelia?’ she called, approaching Robin’s room. Her candle wavered, her pulse quickening as she rested her hand on the old brass door-knob. She didn’t want to see the evidence of what had taken place there. She started as her parents’ bedroom door creaked open further down the corridor. Was Jahmelia in the wardrobe? But police had searched every inch of this place. Besides, therewasno wardrobe, was there? Yet parts of this house seemed to have been recreated, like a stage set. Sarah swallowed back the tears that threatened. She had never felt so alone.
Turning away from Robin’s room, she sensed unseen forces crowding around her as she carried on down the dark passage. She stood before her parents’ old bedroom – the place where her childhood ended.I died here,she thought, her attention drawn to the wardrobe in the centre of the floor. She recognised it from her grandparents’ old room. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to set the scene. But this time the room flickered with the light of candles melting on the window ledge. What was she supposed to do now? She opened her mouth to call Jahmelia’s name, the quiet click of a shotgun making her freeze. She should have known. The stab vest she was wearing would not save her now.
53
‘Don’t move.’ Sarah’s heart was heavy as she recognised the voice behind her. She tilted her head to see a black figure in her peripheral vision. He was in character, shrouded in a cloak reeking with a sour, damp stench. It was as if the soul of Blackhall Manor had settled on his shoulders.
‘Let Jahmelia go.’ She returned her gaze to the wardrobe. ‘She doesn’t belong here.’
She wasn’t surprised at the identity of the so-called Midnight Man. Christian’s ‘big brother’. She took no pleasure in knowing who it was.
‘I called the police when you got here,’ he said. ‘They’re on their way to her now. I’d say most of the police in Slayton are … Don’t turn around!’ he shouted, pressing the gun into the hollow of her back.
Sarah froze, a tremble on her breath.
‘Throw your rucksack into the corner, phone on the floor.’ She slid her phone from her pocket and did as instructed. Unhooking her backpack from her shoulders, she threw it to one side.
‘Where’s Jahmelia?’
‘In the quarry, in the boot of Christian’s car.’ The unused quarry was thirty miles outside of Slayton. A perfect distraction for the police. He must have planned this all along. If Sarah managed to call the police now, they would never reach Blackhall Manor in time.
‘Get into the wardrobe.’ The barrel of the gun jabbed into her back.
Sarah knew how this game ended. She had lost, and the Midnight Man was recreating her greatest fear. Closing her eyes, she summoned her strength as she drew in a slow breath. ‘I’m not getting in that wardrobe. Not for you, not for anyone.’
‘If you don’t, you’ll have his blood on your hands.’
Oh no.A thought flashed bright in Sarah’s mind.Please God, no.
‘Elliott’s sleeping for now. All nice and cosy in Robin’s bed.’
‘I swear, if you hurt him …’ Sarah spun around to face her tormentor and gasped as she saw his face. Her hands flew up in the air as he gripped the rifle and aimed it at her head. Cold fear enveloped her as she met his gaze. She barely recognised the old friend she used to love. His face was heavily scarred and twisted with rage. Wisps of hair poked from beneath the hood, and thick burn scars distorted half his face. His left eye was drooped, the left side of his mouth hanging down. But on the right side of his face she saw her old friend. A man with two faces, just as Elliott had said.
‘Lewis. You wouldn’t kill your own son. This isn’t you. You love Elliott.’
But this wasn’t Maggie’s husband. Neither was it her old friend. It was his face, his body. But there was something else in him. As he pushed back the hood, it was a shock to see the burns he’d suffered, but that wasn’t what made him so frightening. It was the hatred blazing in his eyes. If Blackhall Manor had a soul, then Lewis Carter was its living manifestation.
Sarah hadn’t wanted to believe that Elliott’s father was capable of murder, which is why she’d called on Maggie – to give her a chance to explain. But her old friend had continued to lie. She couldn’t call her out in front of her son. The idea had come when she visited Elsie in hospital and stopped by the burns unit to speak to Lewis. But he wasn’t in the hospital burns unit. His physical injuries had been dealt with. He’d been at The Oaks Rehabilitation Centre in Benrith, being treated for clinical depression and PTSD. But Lewis hadn’t been committed. As a voluntary patient he could come and go as he pleased. Elliott had sensed a man with two faces – his loving, heroic father and the vengeful man he had become. Elliott didn’t recognise his daddy in his visions because half of Lewis’s face had been melted away. The physical scars may be healing but the mental scars were raw and exposed. And now he was standing before her, threatening her with a double-barrelled shotgun.
His voice dripped with venom. ‘All these years … I thought you were dead. Then you come back here like nothing has happened. You didn’t even have the decency to tell me you were alive.’
Sarah’s heart plummeted as she recognised an emotion she knew only too well. Unadulterated grief. But her friendship with Lewis was so many years ago now. He had wanted to take things further, but Sarah hadn’t felt the same way. The other night in her kitchen, Sarah had stared at the photo of them together – Lewis smiling at the camera, his arms thrown over their shoulders as she and Maggie stood either side. It was the way Maggie was looking at Lewis in the photo that had left her feeling unsettled. Had she guessed Lewis’s feelings for her? Was that why she’d helped spread the rumours that Sarah died in the wardrobe as a teen?
‘Lewis,’ she said. ‘Maggie was meant to tell you I was OK. I was in no state to reach out myself.’ But her words did nothing to dampen the anger that seemed to emanate from Lewis’s every pore.
‘Bullshit!’ he spat. ‘She told me you died. I blamed myself for what happened to you. If you hadn’t been grounded because of me, you would have been on a sleepover at Maggie’s on Halloween night.’
‘I didn’t know,’ Sarah said, aghast. ‘How could I?’
