The Witch of Lagg
Ann Pilling
Ann Pilling manages to combine fascinating historical detail with mysterious and compelling ghost stories, and THE WITCH OF LAGG is no exception. Now available as an ebook for the first time, it is sure to attract a whole new wave of fans.Ever since Ann Pilling’s debut novel, BLACK HARVEST, now a Collins Modern Classic, she has built her reputation into one of our best-loved and most talented contemporary writers for children. She won the Guardian Fiction Award for HENRY’S LEG. THE WITCH OF LAGG follows the same children who appear in BLACK HARVEST – Colin, Prill and Oliver. Here they are staying in Laggs Castle, a truly creepy place, and as they begin to explore the old house and the dark woods surrounding it, they find themselves becoming the victims of some evil force… Could it be some kind of vampire? Surely only something really terribly could make a loaf of bread taste of bones and blood…Ann Pilling has managed, yet again, to create a mysterious, compelling and gripping tale.
DEDICATION (#ulink_7b555d26-8590-54c2-b464-7beda0bebb39)
For my father and Julie, with love,
and with profound thanks to Professor Richard Tilleard-Cole
CONTENTS
COVER (#u547f808c-0431-5bf2-9934-ae3986249d6d)
TITLE PAGE (#udcf05c7f-c222-5ccf-8aa5-363c33cd3d3e)
DEDICATION (#ulink_2a699950-b7af-5082-bff5-fa19cef9b0d8)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_98040ad6-d3e6-50c7-a025-2b49b9f5fa19)
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_b2db151f-a1cc-5c41-b0a9-6b2bcacf3722)
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_532f5828-b1e5-5817-8387-57bc4676adcc)
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_426dafb1-409a-512c-903f-f0cb5b9c882c)
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_3fd095fc-8654-549c-9507-a089f4e3c783)
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_f6599776-fb36-57c7-94bc-a5bbd5b3854c)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
AFTERWORD (#litres_trial_promo)
KEEP READING (#litres_trial_promo)
COPYRIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_8243181d-0f98-56d6-939a-5f9977ac3ce4)
“My back’s killing me,” Colin grumbled, trying to get the rickety wheelbarrow back on to the path again, “and this barrow’s falling to pieces. Can’t Mr Grierson get you a new one? How can he expect you to manage with a thing like this?”
Duncan Ross shrugged, and his brown freckled face darkened slightly. It always did when anyone mentioned Hugo Grierson of Lagg Castle. He was a great landowner, one of the wealthiest men in this part of Scotland, and one of the meanest, according to Duncan’s father Angus, who worked for him.
“Och, A’ve tel’t ye already,” the boy said, “he’s awfu’ tight wi’ money. He’d like fine to have us awa’ from here. Have ye no’ seen our hoos?”
They certainly had. Ramshaws was a crumbling stone hut high in the trees above Carlin’s Crag, the great white rock face that gashed this dark green woodland like a huge hunk of bone. The Ross’s cottage had walls that ran with damp, no electricity, and rotting window frames.
Colin wanted to climb the Crag but it was highly dangerous, and all fenced off with barbed wire. The views from up there must be fabulous, with the dark green pine forests spreading down to the sea, and a glimpse across to the English Lake District on a clear day. Lagg Castle, where he was staying for the summer with his sister Prill and their cousin Oliver, was just inland from the coast, overlooking the Solway Firth. They were only fifty miles across the English border, here in the Scottish Lowlands, but it felt like another world.
Today they were too deep in the woods for any kind of view, helping Duncan to dismantle a huge pile of stones in the garden of an empty cottage called Lochashiel. The stones were needed to repair a wall that had collapsed in one of Hugo Grierson’s fields, and the three children had been sent out to give Duncan a hand. The stones were so heavy, and the children had had to make so many journeys with them, that the ancient barrow really did look as if it was ready to fall apart.
“It’s pretty here,” Prill said, looking across the tangled garden at the small white-washed cottage. “Why doesn’t he let you live in this? You’d only need to tidy up a bit, and give it a lick of paint – and it’s much nearer the road. You wouldn’t have that awful long track to climb, if you lived here.”
“Aye,” muttered Duncan, looking even gloomier. “That’s true. But he wants to make money out of the place. Ma faither was born in this hoos, and it’s ours, by rights, but Grierson says he’s keepin’ it for holiday folk.”
“But there’s nobody in it,” Oliver pointed out. “The furniture’s all covered with dust sheets. I’ve looked.”
“You would,” Colin said irritably. “Why don’t you give us a hand with this lot, instead of snooping about, peeping through windows? Some holiday this is going to be. Honestly, I’ve had just about enough!” He sat down grumpily in the middle of the mossy forest path, abandoning the wheelbarrow and its load.
“Let’s have something to eat,” Prill suggested, trying to be tactful. She knew Colin was spoiling for a fight with Oliver. “There are some buns in this bag, and a bottle of lemonade.”
“Home-made,” Oliver said proudly.
Colin would have preferred Coke to the sour, gritty concoction provided by Oliver’s mother, his Great Aunt Phyllis, but she said fizzy drinks rotted your teeth and kept you awake at night. Everything was going to be home-made for the next few weeks because she was in charge of all the cooking.
Lochashiel was on the lower fringes of a vast plantation, which belonged to Hugo Grierson. David Blakeman, Colin and Prill’s father, had come up to Scotland to paint the master of Lagg. He was an art teacher at a big comprehensive school but he sometimes got commissions for portraits. Not enough to give up teaching, though, which was what he really wanted to do.
His wife had stayed behind to look after Grandma Blakeman. She’d just recovered from very bad influenza and the doctor said she shouldn’t really be left. She’d actually caught it from Mrs Blakeman, and neither of them were feeling too fit. “It’s a case of one old crock looking after another,” their mother had laughed, pale-faced but cheerful, waving them off a few days before. Dad had been keen to do this Scottish portrait but when his wife fell ill, and Mr Grierson phoned to say his housekeeper had just given in her notice and left, he thought the whole plan would have to be scrapped. The children couldn’t run round the place unsupervised, the man had made that quite clear. Then Great Aunt Phyllis came to the rescue.
She was Grandma’s younger sister and Oliver was her adopted son. They lived with miserable Uncle Stanley in a London flat at the top of 9, Thames Terrace, a forlorn-looking house near the river where she looked after six elderly people and where Oliver had to creep round in soft shoes, and whisper all the time, in case he annoyed the old folk.
They’d all gone away for the summer, while repairs were being done to the house, but Uncle Stanley had refused to budge. He didn’t trust those workmen, they might steal his books, or interfere with his collections.
Aunt Phyllis was all for getting Oliver out of London, away to the country, and when Dad told her that the holiday was off because Hugo Grierson had just lost his housekeeper she immediately offered to help Mum could stay behind with Grandma, and get her strength up again, and she would cope with the family, Oliver, his two older cousins, and their little sister Alison who was just walking. The toddler had her moments but she was no match for her Aunt Phyllis. After years of handling difficult old people, and years before that as a hospital matron, she reckoned she could manage Alison blindfold, with one hand tied behind her back.
Rather to Dad’s surprise, Mr Grierson had agreed instantly, over the phone. His main concern was to have peace and quiet for the painting sessions, and not to be disturbed by a troop of noisy children. Aunt Phyllis sounded ideal.
“It’s all worked out beautifully,” she’d announced, patting her new steel-grey perm when they eventually met up at Dumfries Station, but one look at Oliver and the Blakemans’ spirits sank. He’d muscled in on their family holiday yet again, and this time all his pernickety, nit-picking habits would be reinforced by his mother.
Anyway, if either of them upset Alison it was going to be all-out war. They’d agreed that on the train.
“She’s not going to be bossed round by those two,” Prill had said fiercely. “She’s only little, and they’ll just have to make allowances. Aunt Phyllis is always so mad keen to get people organized. Ugh!”
It was their aunt who’d roped them in for this rock-shifting exercise. She firmly believed that “the devil made work for idle hands to do” and when she’d discovered that Duncan was expected to do the job all on his own she’d immediately dispatched the children up to Lochashiel.
“Go and give the poor boy a bit of help,” she’d ordered, immediately after breakfast. “Get some fresh air in those lungs. Four pairs of hands are better than one. Lunch at twelve-thirty sharp. I’ll cope with Alison.”
Oliver hadn’t wanted to touch those stones at all. The first couple of days with his cousins were always difficult anyway, because he irritated Colin, who made no secret of the fact, but the minute he saw the huge heap, piled up like a cairn on the top of a mountain, in the middle of that cottage garden, he knew that there was something special about it, and that it shouldn’t be tampered with.
He’d said nothing, realizing they’d probably laugh at him, or say he’d got a bee in his bonnet, as usual. Instead, he’d hung about by the little garden gate as the other three inspected the mysterious rocky mound, with cold shivers running up and down his back, silently willing them to leave the thing alone. When they started to load the barrow he came forward very reluctantly, but he didn’t offer to help. Prill and Colin knew he wasn’t strong, and he was ill quite a lot. He’d trade on that if the Scots boy tried to get him working.
He stood watching nervously while the others removed the first few layers of stones and chucked them into the barrow. When two loads had been wheeled down to the field, and they were doing a third, Oliver peered forward and suddenly put a hand on the greenish mossy stones that were now coming to light. They were damp.
“I bet it’s a well,” he said quietly, a strange excitement creeping into his voice. He jabbed at the boulders with a stick. “Look, you can see now. It’s definitely circular, and these stones have sunk in a bit. I bet that’s what it is.”
Duncan glanced across at Oliver as he took a swig from the lemonade bottle. This boy puzzled him. A queer staring look had come into his eyes when he saw the cairn, his thin little body had gone all rigid for a minute and he had obviously been very reluctant to join in. The Scots boy wasn’t too impressed. It was a hard job they were doing, and he needed all the help he could get. The girl hadn’t been able to do very much, because most of the stones were just too heavy for her to lift, but this boy could have surely had a go. His first attempt had sent him staggering backwards and his second had grazed his knuckles. He’d then spent a full five minutes complaining, and inspecting his injuries, and after that he’d not helped at all; instead he’d fiddled round by the well, poking round with a penknife and putting bits of rubbish in his pockets. He just didn’t like hard work. Oliver didn’t exactly resemble Superman. He was thin and bony, and short for his age, and he wore thick black glasses that gave him an owlish look.
“I reckon it’ll take maybe another twa loads to finish this job,” Duncan grunted, casting a scowl at Oliver as he helped Colin back on to the track with the barrow. “Aye, an’ yon laddie’s neither use nor ornament the noo.”
“No,” Colin muttered in embarrassment. “It’s a bit typical I’m afraid. He’s a skiver. I’d like to tell him exactly what I think of him but it’s rather difficult with his mother always breathing down our necks.”
He could have said a lot more about his cousin but he decided to keep quiet. They’d been on holiday together before and Oliver got weird ideas about all sorts of things. Events had often proved him right, but somehow Colin didn’t want to embark on all that, not with this straightforward Scots boy. He’d certainly noticed Oliver’s odd reaction to the cairn of stones, his bulging eyes, his shaking; he might tackle him about it later, when they were on their own. He knew his cousin wouldn’t say anything himself, he was too secretive.
They were tireder than they knew after all the fetching and carrying. Colin could hardly push the barrow along the path, though it was downhill all the way to the field.
“Is it stuck?” said Prill, tugging at the rough wooden handles. “Let’s all pull together. One, two, three … there you are. You’re off.” And Colin staggered away into the trees with his creaking load.
He was halfway down the track when something odd happened. At first he thought it was that idiot Oliver playing tricks on him. He was pushing his barrow along, quite enjoying the smell of the pine needles, and the stillness of the deep woods, when someone suddenly jumped on to his back.
“Hey!” he shouted, dropping the handles, “What on earth …” It was the kind of thing Alison did sometimes. She’d get up on to a stool or table, leap on his shoulders and beg for a piggy-back ride. Cold little fingers were clutching at his neck now, and there was a funny whistling noise in his ears. He spun round, but the weight on his back made him lurch about and he fell sprawling into the bracken. The barrow tipped over and its load went crashing on to the path. One of the biggest stones hit Colin’s foot, right on the instep where there was hardly any flesh. It was terribly painful, even through his sneakers.
“Ouch!” he yelled, hopping about, and rubbing. But someone was actually laughing at him, a thin, high-pitched laugh that seemed to set the nearest bushes rustling. A spiteful kind of cackle that sent cold shivers through him.
His foot was so painful that he felt quite sick. He sat down, closed his eyes, and dropped his head down between his knees. When he looked up again Duncan was peering down at him anxiously. He had two massive boulders, one under each arm, and he was sweating.
“What’s come ower ye, man?” he asked.
“I … I …” Colin began feebly, but words failed him. There was nobody else on the path at all, and the other two were still up at Lochashiel. Yet it had to be Oliver who’d pounced on him like that. Who else could it have been?
“What’s wrang wi’ ye?” repeated Duncan, looking at him curiously, then at the overturned barrow, and the litter of stones.
“Someone jumped out at me,” Colin said, still rubbing his foot, “and they must have run off into the woods. I – heard them laughing.” He got to his feet again, but he swayed slightly. The weight didn’t seem to have gone away somehow. He must have ricked his back, humping all those stones about.
“Sit you doon, man,” ordered Duncan. “Ye look like ye’ve seen a wee ghaist. I’ll put the stanes back; you bide where y’are a wee while.”
Colin watched him reload the barrow. He puffed and sweated as if each stone weighed a ton. It was as if they’d doubled in size on their way down from Lochashiel, and he kept dropping them. It was the slimy ones from the bottom, presumably, that would keep slipping through his fingers.
He’d only just finished when Prill and Oliver came out of the trees. The skinny young boy was carefully cleaning the blades of his penknife but Prill was looking into the woods. She kept turning her head from side to side, and sniffing.
“I’m right you know, Oll. Someone has been along here. You should tell your father, Duncan. Mr Grierson’s got intruders.”
“What? Here in the wood? That’ll be holiday folk from yon tents in the long field.” He shrugged. “Ye canna do ower much aboot that. It’s no’ agin the law to trespass here in Scotland, unless harm’s done.”
“But they have,” said Prill. “They’ve been lighting fires. Can’t you smell anything?”
Duncan sniffed. Someone had certainly been burning something, and close at hand. It was a warm day with no wind, yet you could smell smoke drifting over from somewhere.
“It’s like this all along the path,” Prill went on, “Right back to Lochashiel. It looks as if someone’s been along here with a blow-lamp, or something. Look at the ground.”
Underfoot the moss was ashy, turned to black velvet then all broken up into crumbly pieces by their feet. On both sides of the track the low bushes were brown and scorched, their leaves hanging off them limply, like dirty twisted ribbons.
Duncan pulled a face. “I must tell ma faither aboot this. If his plantations take light I don’t doubt yon Grierson’ll have a fit, then we’ll be oot in a crack. Looks like there’s some daftie hereabouts. Colin heard snickerin’ when he tripped wi’ yon stanes.”
“How did you trip?” said Oliver suspiciously, examining the path. “It’s quite smooth here. I can’t understand it.”
“Those stones are heavy,” Colin replied, quite savagely. “You’d know, if you’d actually bothered to help. It … I just fell sideways, and the whole lot went flying.”
“But I still can’t—”
“Oh shut up, Oll,” Prill said anxiously. She didn’t like the look of Colin at all. He kept rubbing at his back and his neck, his face was very white, and he was shivering. She hoped the dreaded flu bug hadn’t followed them up to Scotland.
She felt cold herself as they all helped push the last barrow-load down to the field. But the cold didn’t seem to come from the woods. It was uncanny. It was at their backs, all the way along the blackened track, yet it was a warm day and the trees were dangerously dry, according to Duncan. The path was so withered and burnt it was hard to believe that anything green would ever grow here again.
Oliver looked at the scorched bushes in uneasy silence and when he thought of that great stone cairn he felt frightened. They’d disturbed something today, something very ancient and perhaps sacred, something no one had meddled with for years and years. He didn’t like this uncanny icy feeling in the middle of the sun-dappled woodland, and he didn’t like Colin’s accident, or the sound of that crazy laughter either.
What had they done? What had they started? Oliver had the distinct feeling that this episode in the forest was only the beginning.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_8ac653bf-eda9-57c2-89b3-2999ed8c9511)
“I feel like the Salvation Army,” said Colin. “All I need’s my trombone.”
They were walking slowly down the long dark drive of Lagg Castle, away from the house. He was carrying a pan of hot soup and Oliver held a complete dinner covered up with a plate. Prill had their red setter Jessie on a lead in one hand, the other grasped her little sister’s arm firmly. There was quite a fast road at the bottom of the drive. It’d be just like Jessie to see a rabbit and bolt across after it, and Alison might run straight after her.
“Look to the right, look to the left, and over we go,” chanted Oliver, leading the party with his meat and two veg. Colin and Prill grinned at one another slyly. He was just like his mother. Now they knew where all those irritating little quotes of his came from.
They were taking some dinner to Granny MacCann. “It’s your good deed for the day,” Aunt Phyllis told them. “She’s been rather poorly.”
“Thought we’d done our good deed,” Colin had whispered to Prill as the dinner was arranged on its plate. “What was this morning’s caper? A picnic or something? And when’s she going to let us off the hook? I want to explore. Duncan says there’s a marvellous beach nearby, and there’s a castle somewhere, on a little island.”
“Well, it gets us out of washing up.”
“Yes, but she’s roped Dad in to do that, then Mr Grierson’ll be ringing his bell and he’ll have to go running back up to the studio. It’s like training for the Army.”
The spindly legs of their young cousin had already disappeared up the woodland path, though they could see the dinner plate, flashing in and out of the trees. The main road cut through the Forest of Lagg. The woods went on for miles on this side. Granny MacCann lived half a mile along the lower track quite near Lochashiel, in a cottage with a small field sloping up to it from the road, where sheep grazed and the afternoon sun dappled the trees above. From here Carlin’s Crag was a terrifying overhang. The strong light made it gleam smooth and white like an enormous polished skull. The tiny cottage below was tucked in, under its shadow, and there were stones on the roof, Colin noticed. Bad weather must have brought those down from the Crag. What a place for an eighty-year-old woman to live, all alone.
Granny MacCann had been cook and housekeeper at Lagg for years, and she’d gone on doing it into her seventies. Nobody had been satisfactory since she’d left, according to Grierson. People never stayed longer than a month or two. The children hadn’t met Hugo Grierson yet but they didn’t much like what they’d heard about him. He was obviously very mean with the Rosses and they resented his attitude to their father too. He’d had an electric bell rigged up in the basement and Mr Blakeman was supposed to go running up to his rooms the minute it rang. Mr Grierson seemed to think he could buy people, body and soul, and do just what he liked with them.
Granny MacCann was one of the few people around that Grierson didn’t interfere with. She’d rocked him in his cradle up in the old nursery at Lagg, and there was nothing she didn’t know about him. He never went to visit her but he did keep her in firewood, and the Rosses were sent down to check on her when the weather was bad. Occasionally he even had the odd repair done to her cottage and Hugo Grierson rarely spent money on anything, unless, like this portrait, it added to his own grand image of himself.
Granny MacCann was enthroned in a big carver chair by a small fire. There was nothing faint or feeble about the strong Scots voice that bade them, “Come along in wi’ ye,” when they knocked. In fact something in the harsh tone of command was a bit frightening, and when Oliver pushed the door open, and they all crept inside, they were frankly terrified.
Aunt Phyllis thought she was eighty plus, but she was surely into her nineties. Her long pendulous nose drooped down, her sharp old woman’s chin curved up to meet it, and in between was a black hole of a mouth displaying three yellow teeth. She was looking at them curiously, with eyes of the oddest whitish-green colour; little eyes they were, like chips of pale stone in her worn mahogany face, eyes that missed nothing.
The old woman had hardly any hair. What was left strayed out from under a little knitted cap and, in spite of the fire, she sat swathed in layers of woolly shawls. She wore grey mittens and her fingernails, greeny-white like her eyes, had grown so long they curved right over, like something in a horror comic. If it hadn’t been for the television in one corner, and the fact that her stout little legs were encased in trendy striped warmers, Oliver really would have said she was a witch.
Colin and Prill were thinking of witches too, Colin of his grandmother’s Arthur Rackham fairy book which he’d always had to read with very clean hands, and Prill about Hansel and Gretel and the witch roasting children in her oven. She wanted to give the old woman her dinner and make a quick exit. The pretty cottage, approached across a burn through a small grove of rowan trees, was much less appealing inside, and as for Granny MacCann herself …
“Come to your grannie then,” the old woman whispered to Alison, and to everyone’s amazement the little girl toddled across the filthy floor, climbed up into the woolly lap, and buried herself in the shawls. Prill was staggered. Alison was rather a difficult child and very particular about her likes and dislikes. She disliked quite a few people, and getting her to stay anywhere for longer than five minutes was a real pain. Granny MacCann was talking some unintelligible Scottish gibberish to her, through great mouthfuls of food, and Alison was listening, and stroking a large cat.
It was a moth-eaten, black and white torn, an ugly creature with only one ear and a vicious look in its greenest of green eyes. The old woman introduced it affectionately as “ma wee Dandy”. It spat at Jessie, and arched its back, but instead of going for it, the big dog cowered away whining, rubbing herself against Prill’s legs. Jessie was six times as big as Dandy, but she seemed frightened of him.
The old woman knew all about their stone-moving, up at Lochashiel, and she obviously didn’t approve. “Ye’ll stir things up, laddie,” she said, wagging one filthy finger at Oliver who’d crept up close, for a better view. “Young Aggie Ross’ll be oot after ye, that she will …”
Oliver started when he heard that, and a sudden wave of cold swept over him. “Who’s Aggie Ross?” he said, in a hoarse whisper.
The cottage was smelly, and Prill had backed away to stand near the open door. She was looking out into the garden, longing to get away, but Colin was standing near Oliver, and saw everything. When his cousin nearly jumped out of his skin at the name of Aggie Ross their eyes met, just for a moment, and in that moment they both saw the same thing, the barrow going over, and the huge heap of stones, and they heard the spiteful laughter echoing through the woods.
“Aggie Ross,” Oliver repeated, touching the old woman’s skirt. “Who is she?”
If Granny MacCann had heard she pretended not to. She crooned over Alison and stroked the mangy old cat and pressed her shrivelled lips together very firmly. But Oliver, staring very hard at her, in that maddening way of his, saw fear in the ancient face, and perhaps a regret that she’d ever mentioned Aggie Ross.
It felt different in the cottage now, the fire had guttered to a single flame and the old Scots lullaby had stopped abruptly. Outside the sun had gone behind a cloud and the low room was suddenly dark and wintry. “She’ll be oot after ye …” What could it mean?
As usual Oliver’s busy brain was racing ahead but he must go one step at a time. Aggie Ross could well be some distant relative of Angus and Duncan; on the other hand she may be just a local busybody, someone who occasionally rented Lochashiel and didn’t want a troop of kids messing up her garden. They’d have to ask Duncan next time they saw him. After Granny MacCann the Rosses knew more about Lagg Castle and its estate than anyone else around, even though they’d lived in England for a year or so. They’d come back after old Mrs Grierson had died. She’d promised Lochashiel to them, on her death bed, but there was no will. So everything had gone to her son Hugo. Angus Ross hated him for that.
As for moving that heap of stones, Duncan had made nothing of it. So if there was a sinister story attached to the cairn he obviously didn’t know a thing about it. His father might know though.
Prill was signalling wildly for the boys to grab Alison and say goodbye, but Oliver wouldn’t budge. He was fascinated by the cottage. The smell and the filth didn’t bother him at all, he was used to very old people. They hoarded all kinds of rubbish in their bedsitters at home, and old rags and bones were bound to smell a bit if you couldn’t get in to clean properly. There were bones too, all along the window ledges and on the mantelpiece, the skulls of badgers and sheep and mice, the rib cages of birds and what looked like the backbone of a deer. For the old woman to have bones littered round the place struck him as distinctly peculiar until he remembered that Granny MacCann had got seven children and fifteen grandchildren. At various ages they must have often wandered in to this cottage with their treasures from the woods. These were the remains.
Over the fireplace some tiny bones were fanned round in the shape of a star and underneath there were strings and strings of withered red berries. The old woman wore a similar string round her neck. “Tis to keep the de’il awa frae the hoos, laddie,” she croaked, as he fingered the dusty necklaces that hung from the mantelpiece. “Plant rowans and the de’il’ll no’ come near ye.”
Prill and Colin went outside, muttering their goodbyes, followed by a grizzling Alison who would have obviously stayed with the old woman all day. Prill couldn’t understand it. Granny MacCann’s was a face she would dream about in nightmares.
As they waited for Oliver, a fat, untidy-looking woman with a baby in her arms pushed past them, into the house. “And how are ye today, Grann?” she said, in a loud harsh voice. She paid no attention whatever to the three children. Perhaps, in these parts, you were always avoided if you were known to be guests of Hugo Grierson.
They were trailing back along the track towards the road when an awful noise behind made them all whip round. It sounded as if a mad dog had been let loose in a home for stray cats. There was a screaming and a spitting, and a series of ear-splitting howls, and they saw Dandy in the cottage garden, his fur all prickly like a black and white porcupine, tearing up and down the patch of grass, then round in mad circles, faster and faster, chasing his own tail, then racing up a tall birch by the gate, absolutely vertical, like something shot from a gun. They couldn’t see the cat now but they could hear it only too well. It was howling and screeching wildly, shaking all the branches as if every devil in hell was after it.
“What on earth—” began Colin. Alison was frightened and grabbed Prill’s hand, and Jessie was tugging on the lead, nose to the ground, trying desperately to get away towards the road.
“It’s having a fit,” Oliver explained coolly. “I saw the same thing happen once, to one of our resident’s cats. I know it looks frightening but that’s honestly all it is. Animals do have them. The poor thing may have a tumour on its brain or something. I expect that’s how it lost its ear.”
“How?” said Prill, horrified.
“It must have scratched and scratched and reduced it to shreds with its claws. That’d be my guess anyway.”
“It looks bewitched,” said Colin, laughing uneasily. “Just the kind of thing an old crone like that would have. Heavens, I’m not going back there in a hurry.”
Oliver walked ahead of his cousins, on his own. He wanted to think. His carefully reasoned explanation of the cat’s crazy behaviour was only half the truth. The wretched animal may well have something wrong with its brain, but the question was, why? Did these fits happen all the time or had something made it happen? And had Colin’s fall in the woods been just an accident, or was it something more?
Aggie Ross. She was the key. It was all very well for Colin to joke about the old crone and her cat but there’d been an awful silence when that name was mentioned. Silence you could have cut with a knife.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_2ea7dbf7-fb8a-59d2-85a2-e75ad676ab08)
When they reached the bottom road they thought they’d better get a move on. They’d got an appointment with Hugo Grierson who was going to show them round the house. He’d told them to come at two-thirty but nobody had a watch on. It felt later than that.
They hurried past the crumbling gateposts, with their disapproving stone owls perched on top, and plunged into the gloom of the drive. It was bordered with great pine trees. The pinnacles and chimneys of the enormous house were just visible above them, and above those a dark cloud lowered. Oliver had already christened the place Castle Dracula.
“I wouldn’t like to come along here after dark,” said Colin. “No wonder the servants are always leaving. It’d give anyone the creeps. I wonder what Mr Grierson looks like? Do you think he’s got fangs?”
The two boys giggled but Prill didn’t join in. She wasn’t at all keen on being shown round. She wanted to skip this visit and get down to the sea, to stand on a great lonely beach with nothing between her and the endless waves, taking big breaths of deep, fresh air. Lagg’s woodland frightened her. There was a heaviness in the atmosphere that weighed down on her like some invisible burden, as if she’d been carrying Alison on her back for a very long time.
At the curve of the drive Aunt Phyllis met them. She was agitated and attacked them all with soap and a flannel. “This won’t do at all,” she snapped. “It’s well past half two and Mr Grierson’s been out on the steps looking for you. Now come on! He doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”
Colin really objected to the flannel treatment, but his aunt had already disappeared, dragging Oliver after her and leaving the Blakeman tribe to follow. Prill slipped away and shut Jessie up in the stone kennel outside the kitchen – Grierson wouldn’t allow her to come in the house – then pelted back after the others. She found them all in the great front hall of Lagg, waiting to start the tour. Her father looked rather uneasy. Hugo Grierson seemed to have the same effect on everyone. Mr Blakeman had already told them he was a very suspicious character who didn’t trust anybody and thought the whole world was out to do him down. Duncan Ross had implied that he was nothing more than a pompous old twit, and that it wasn’t a castle at all. Until about ten years ago it had simply been called “Lagg”, or “the big house” by the people round about. Grierson lived in it all alone “wi’ naither kith nor kin”, according to Granny MacCann, building up his riches, seeing no one but business people. Prill, staring up at his face from the front doorstep, thought he was the unhappiest-looking man she’d ever seen.
“An ugsome auld de’il.” That’s how Duncan Ross had described him. Colin found the face neither ugly nor old. Grierson was tall and rather distinguished in appearance, with silky reddish hair flecked with grey. He surely couldn’t be much more than sixty, though he’d got a married daughter and a four-year-old grandson. Where was his wife?
“Well, you’ve seen the basement already, of course,” he began, flashing a strained half-smile at the nervous little group. They certainly had. Dad had been given a comfortable bedroom and bathroom on the second floor, with a dressing room off it, but everyone else was below stairs. It was chilly and damp down there and the rooms were small and meanly furnished. What a place to put guests; they were more like dungeons. Perhaps Lagg Castle wasn’t such a silly name after all.
Grierson explained that he couldn’t spare them very much time. A business associate was due in an hour, and he had some figures to go through, so they were hurried through the hall with no time to inspect its treasures properly; the priceless-looking rugs, roped off as in some kind of stately home, the great oriental vases by the huge fireplace, the stags’ heads on the walls and the feet of elephant and bison set in silver and marked with engraved brass plaques.
Colin hung back to look at a painting as the others followed Grierson up the stairs. It was labelled “Grierson of Lagg in his old age, 1732”. The face was horribly fat and the mass of greyish hair must once have been jet black. The man’s skin was so dark it looked like beaten leather, but the long straight nose and the mean piggy eyes that emerged from the blubber might have belonged to Hugo Grierson himself, and he had the same thin, unforgiving mouth. Take six stone of fat away and dye his hair and this would be Grierson to the life.
No comment was made on the portrait. They climbed higher and higher, up more flights of stairs, with Grierson giving a bored running commentary on the history of the house, something he’d obviously done many times before. As they climbed, various doors were opened briefly. “The blue room … the purple room … the chintz room …” the man parrotted flatly, then, “Helen’s room”.
Alison saw something, tugged her hand free of her father’s, and darted in. They found her clambering up on to an exquisite antique rocking horse and looking round in greedy wonder at the shelves of toys and books. She didn’t want to see any more of this funny old house. Helen’s room was paradise.
Grierson was looking most disapproving. Mr Blakeman quickly extracted Alison and shut the door firmly. There were loud wails all the way up to the tower suite on the fifth floor, a set of rooms where Grierson lived and where Dad was doing the portrait. She was clearly annoying Grierson. He didn’t like spoiled little toddlers and that unbearable noise they all made, but she only stopped crying when they went into his private drawing room. She saw things there that made her forget the rocking horse for a while, and so did the others.
The main room was enormous. You could have made four separate ones out of it, none of them small. Doors led off it into various offices. Even in his own house Grierson talked like an estate agent. The room at the front of the house was a library, at the other end was a master bedroom, a bathroom and a dressing room. Everything was on a very grand scale.
“You could fit our whole house into this,” Prill whispered to Colin. “Isn’t it gloomy though?”
Off the dressing room was a second vast bedroom which had been cleared out to make a studio. Grierson disappeared into it with Dad. Now the tour was over he seemed to have forgotten all about the children and they wandered about looking at things on their own.
“For heaven’s sake don’t touch anything,” Prill’s father muttered to her as Grierson swept him off to discuss progress so far. He was obsessively interested in his portrait.
Prill went straight over to the library window with Alison in her arms. You could see the sea from there, and that was where she wanted to be, not here in this unlovely, silent house stuffed with all its dusty relics. The tide was out and the sand gleamed, peach-coloured and glistening in the afternoon sun. It was a wide, wide beach with dark woods sloping down to it, and a strip of whitish stones where the sand began. Some way out from the trees she saw a great blackened stake. It was hard to tell how tall it was, from this distance, but it looked like the trunk of a very large, straight tree, and it was driven right into the sand like a gigantic nail.
Grierson, coming through from the studio for a minute to check that nothing was being tampered with, saw her staring down. A strange, blank look came into his eyes, then his mouth twisted into a little smile. “No doubt you’re wondering what that is? It’s an old family memorial. Not ours, mind you. Now there are Rosses round here again they waste my time keeping it standing. They go down there sometimes, scraping the barnacles off. Hub!” He gave a loud, unpleasant laugh. “Best oak that was, from my woodland. Rosses … huh.” He spat the name out as if it was poisonous.
He went back into the studio and shut the door, leaving Prill by the open window, clutching Alison, and shaking. Grierson’s presence had had the most extraordinary effect on her. She’d felt almost suffocated by him, and by the sheer weight of malice and loathing in his voice. He really did seem to hate the poor Rosses, and that stake on the beach obviously had some strange significance for him. What could be wrong with the man to speak so savagely to a young girl he hardly knew?
Alison had burst into tears when she saw that thin mean face close up. She’s struggled in Prill’s arms and waved her little pink paws at the open window, pointing down urgently.
“Yes, beach,” Prill murmured soothingly. “Sand. Allie go to beach soon. Don’t cry, pet.” It was better now Grierson had gone back to his precious portrait. Alison hadn’t just disliked him, she’d been scared. Her small firm body had gone all rigid and stiff in Prill’s arms, and that only ever happened when something really frightened her.
On the other side of the room Colin had made an interesting discovery. Tucked behind a cabinet, as if Grierson wanted nobody to see it, a sampler, worked in coloured wool, hung on a nail. It was the most curious text he’d ever seen on a thing like that. His grandmother had several, and they all went on about virtue and piety. But in large red letters this one stated boldy, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live: Exodus 22 v. 18”, and the date was embroidered underneath in blue cross-stitch. “May 20th 1865”.
Oliver was the person to ask about this. His general knowledge was amazing and his mother, who was very religious, had just had him confirmed. She now took him to church twice every Sunday and made him sit through extremely long services. He’d have something to say about this sampler. But when he saw what his cousin was doing Colin didn’t dare call him over in case Mr Grierson suddenly came out of the studio again. The little nosy parker was bent over a large writing desk, where he actually seemed to be looking at Grierson’s private papers.
What Oliver had under his nose was a diary written up for the day before, and he was busily inspecting it. Well, it couldn’t be very private if the man left it open for all to see, so why not? There was nothing exciting in it anyway, just a very boring account of a very boring day, about six lines, with some additions and subtractions pencilled in the margin. What caught his eye, though, was the bit at the end in red. It was written backwards, in mirror writing, but Oliver had no problem with it. He was left-handed and he often wrote like that, when he was bored in lessons. “Oh God,” he read, “wherefore art Thou absent from us so long? Why is Thy wrath so hot against the sheep of Thy pasture?”
What on earth was that doing there? It was from one of the Psalms, one of the really miserable ones that went on and on moaning while your neck got stiff and your bottom sore, listening to the choir. Daringly, he turned back a few pages. Each entry was the same, a factual account of his day then these awful back to front bits in red. “Haste Thee, O God, to deliver me; make haste to help me, O Lord.” And, “Save me, O God, for the waters are come in, even unto my soul.”
At the sound of Grierson’s voice droning on and on about canvases and poses and what he ought to wear for his portrait, Oliver retreated hastily and whipped round. Colin stepped back from the queer sampler and pretended to be inspecting a clock, and Prill came forward into the middle of the room with Alison held in front of her, like a shield. In Grierson’s presence they all lined up automatically, like an army waiting for instructions.
He came over to the window, pushed past Prill, stood looking out for a minute, then slammed it shut quite violently. It was as if he’d seen or heard something down there that displeased him. He even drew a curtain half-way across and darkened the room. All sense of peace had vanished with his coming, and as soon as she saw him, Alison began to cry bitterly. He clearly wanted them out of the way. An accountant called Robert Guthrie was due, and Dad had been asked to stay for a drink so they could meet each other, and have a look at the portrait together.
The children were offered nothing, and Mr Grierson was steering them testily towards some cold back stairs.
“You’ll get down quicker that way,” he said stiffly, almost pushing them through the door. Alison was now crying quite hysterically. She was cold out here and she wanted to stay with her father.
“Never mind, pet,” Prill said, stroking her cheek. “He’s a horrid man, he doesn’t understand about families. Don’t cry. We can take you down to the beach.”
“No wonder his daughter married and left home,” Colin whispered to Oliver as they clattered down the icy stone staircase. “No wonder she never comes to see him. Can’t blame her. Can you?”
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_350ac2ee-3581-5a08-a1f5-dce063605441)
“You can go,” said Aunt Phyllis, “as long as you’re back by six. No, no, leave Alison with me. Don’t want any disasters. Now about the swimming—”
“Mother, we aren’t going swimming,” Oliver said impatiently. “I’ve told you, we just want to have a look at the beach, that’s all.”
“We saw it from Mr Grierson’s room,” added Prill. “It looks beautiful.”
“All right then.” Aunt Phyllis sounded distinctly put out. She’d decided to make them all tidy up their rooms before the evening meal. The Blakemans didn’t put anything away, and there were books all over Oliver’s bed. Still, it was a fine afternoon, and there may not be too many of those. Let them go to their beach. It’d be quieter anyway, with just the toddler to cope with.
Prill half ran there, partly because she was trying to keep up with Jessie, partly because she wanted to escape from Lagg’s woodlands and get by the sea. At least Grierson didn’t own that. When the two boys caught up with her she was standing quite still on the edge of the plantation. The trees were small here and many were half buried in fine sand. It was such an exposed stretch of coast Prill wondered how anything could survive for very long. Except on the calmest day the winds rushed across wildly and the currents were highly dangerous, according to Duncan, the tide creeping up quite without warning. There were ugly “No Swimming” notices all along the dunes, at lurching angles, like old gravestones.
Colin and Oliver came up behind and stared with her. Directly in front of them, stretching for miles on each side, were the most marvellous dunes. The sand was silver-white, so clean you could almost smell it, and moulded into great mounds and hollows by the endless wind that had made holes and dips and craters in it, like the surface of the moon.
Colin wished he was six again. He wanted to kick his shoes off and roll in those hollows, he wanted to tear away and hide, he wanted to run to the very tops and pelt down the sandy slopes and plop into the bottom like a baby. But Oliver’s eyes saw none of this. They were riveted on the stake.
“Let’s walk out to it,” he said in an odd, faraway voice. “Let’s get there before the tide comes in. I want to see it properly.”
“Oh, it’ll be hours before we need to worry about that,” said Colin, clambering down through the dunes and on to the flat of the beach. “It’s not turned yet, surely.”
“It has, you know, and it comes up quite suddenly just here. Your friend Duncan said so.” Oliver’s voice was sarcastic. He was a bit sick of hearing all about what Duncan Ross said and did. Colin so obviously preferred the Scots boy to him. “Come on Prill,” he called. She was still up on the dunes, throwing sticks to Jessie. “We don’t want to go back without seeing it.”
Prill came, reluctantly. It was a beautiful beach but the stake spoiled it. Unless you hid in one of the moon craters there was nowhere you could go without your eye catching it. Its knobbled blackness reared up, staining the pure sand, and made strange witchy shadows as the afternoon sun sank lower, and the first chill of the evening crept up on them.
“It’s much bigger than it looks,” said Oliver, crouching down, “Thicker as well as taller.” They were right up to the stake now, and wandering all round it. “And it’s pine, not oak,” he added, squinting at it.
“Grierson said it was oak,” Prill muttered, standing away from it. “Best oak from my own woodland,” she repeated. “That’s what he said.”
“Well, the first one must have been oak in that case,” said Oliver, taking a tape measure from his pocket. “But, if the site’s as old as people think, it must have been replaced several times.”
“How long has it been here then?” asked Colin.
“Oh, hundreds of years. I don’t know exactly. I’ve not researched it properly yet,” his cousin said self-importantly, measuring the girth of the trunk. “How tall do you think it is?”
Colin stood next to it. “Well, I’m five foot six, so I reckon … one … two … about eight feet, say eight and a half. But what’s it doing here? That’s what I’d like to know.”
“Dunno. We can ask the Rosses. They look after it,” said Oliver, “according to Drac. It obviously marks some significant event though. Perhaps it was the scene of a fight or something. We’re quite near the English border here after all.” He pocketed his tape measure, folded his arms and stared at it thoughtfully. Prill had her back to the two boys and was leaning against the stake, staring out to sea.
“The tide is coming in,” she said dreamily. “Look, it’s filling all these little channels now. We’ll get our feet wet if we don’t budge.”
Colin suddenly whispered something to Oliver and the boy smiled, and dug in his pocket. A minute later poor Prill found herself grabbed from behind and tied securely to the old wooden stump with a green tape measure. The others were running off up the beach. Jessie was leaping about, pawing and slobbering all over her, and the tide was filling those deep channels faster and faster.
“Come back!” she screamed, tugging at the tape. “Don’t be so foul, you two. It’s not funny. This thing’s really tight … I’m getting wet. Oh, come on”
She didn’t want to do an Oliver and be a spoilsport, though it was rather typical of him to lend his tape measure for a trick he’d have hated himself. But Prill didn’t like it. The tide was coming in, and the bumps and knobbles of the slimy black stake were digging into her back. “Colin!” she yelled, starting to panic.
“All right, all right. Hang on Joan of Arc.” He came racing back. He knew Prill was rather thin-skinned about practical jokes. They were both ankle-deep in water now while the cowardly Oliver was striding off firmly towards the dunes. “Sorry,” he muttered, as Prill stood there crossly, lashed to the great wooden stump with her brother picking at the knots. “I didn’t mean to tie it quite so tightly … there.”
She was free, rubbing her wrists and trying to find a bit of sandbank to stand on, to escape from the swirling water. “Trying to drown me, were you? And listen to Oliver, he’s laughing at us. He’s an absolute pig. I’ll tie him up, next time.”
“Nobody’s laughing,” Colin said quietly. “Don’t over-react. He’s just embarrassed because it was his tape.”
“He is laughing,” Prill interrupted angrily, starting to run. “Just wait till I get hold of him.” She began to chase up the beach after the skinny retreating figure in its baggy shorts.
Colin stared after them, and the laughter came again, on the wind. The sound sent an icy chill through him. Prill was quite right, someone had laughed at her as she stood lashed to the stake with Oliver’s tape measure, and they were laughing now. But it was a thin, high-pitched screaming kind of laugh, not Oliver’s voice at all. He’d heard it before. It was the laughter he’d heard in the woodland when the barrow tipped over and the stones hurt his foot.
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_25bf1f2c-420c-54fb-af35-74d62962d0a3)
It was just half past nine. Oliver had been writing his diary and he was now in the bathroom, going through his elaborate bedtime ritual of cleaning his teeth and brushing his hair one hundred times. His mother believed it was the only sure way of avoiding nits.
He called his diary a journal, but it wasn’t a grand leather-bound affair like Hugo Grierson’s, just a small Woolworth’s exercise book, and he didn’t write in it every day. It was kept for events of special importance in his life. There’d been quite a lot to say, tonight.
“This holiday’s going to be lonely for me,” read Colin. He’d come to talk to Oliver and found the bedroom empty and the notebook open on a table. Down the passage he could hear his cousin making splashing noises at the washbasin. Guiltily, Colin read on.
“They never take much notice of me,” the account continued, “but now they’ve made friends with Duncan Ross it’s going to be even worse. He’s just Colin’s type, big and sporty. They even look alike. Daren’t think what they say about me, when I’m not there.”
Colin and Prill were rather attractive children, and poor Oliver was only too aware that he was a bit funny-looking. Colin was tall and broad, with a handsome mop of auburn hair, and Prill was growing more and more like something out of a Victorian painting. She had red hair too, and she wore it long. Both had large brown eyes and the kind of skin that tanned easily. People sometimes commented on their good looks in Oliver’s presence. He didn’t think it was very tactful. They did quite well in school and they were both good swimmers, whereas Oliver swam like a brick. Colin was getting good at rugby too, according to his father. “Where was I when all the prizes were given out?” Oliver had written bitterly, thinking about those great beefy shoulders. “I can’t help being small for my age,” the spindly writing went on, “and I was very ill when I was little. That can weaken you for life. Those two never think about that of course. I couldn’t have lifted those stones at Lochashiel even if I’d wanted to (WHICH I DIDN’T), and anyway, those bones I dug up from the mud may be extremely important. Not sure I’ll show them though.”
Colin, feeling more and more uncomfortable, turned the page in fascination. “What I really ought to find out is—”
“Seen enough?” said a spiteful little voice from the doorway. Oliver was wearing striped Viyella pyjamas and carrying a large sponge-bag, and his thin face was dark pink with rage. He stormed across the room and snatched the notebook from Colin’s fingers with such force that it ripped across the back. “Do you make a habit of reading other people’s diaries, Colin?” he spat out, in a strangled voice.
“No more than you do,” his cousin answered smartly. “You were reading Mr Grierson’s. I saw you.”
There was an abrupt silence, and Oliver flushed darker than ever. “That was different,” he stammered. “There’s something going on here. It involves Mr Grierson, and we’ve got to get to the bottom of it.”
“I know,” Colin said quietly. “That’s why I’ve come. Prill’s coming too, in a minute.”
The two boys stared at one another. Oliver had lost his usual composure and his face had somehow crumpled up. He actually looked as if he might cry, when he saw the ripped notebook.
Colin felt rather sorry for him, and he hated himself for having read the diary. At least he knew how things looked to Oliver.
“I’m sorry, Oll,” he said. “I shouldn’t have read your diary and … and we didn’t mean to be unfriendly.”
There was a pause, then Colin said awkwardly, “Well, what was in Grierson’s diary, anything important?”
Oliver shrugged. “It was all a bit boring really, with sums down the margin. He obviously studies his bank balance when there’s not much to say. That’s the real sign of a miser.”
“Anything else?” said Colin, trying to sound casual. The familiar faraway expression in Oliver’s eyes told him that there was.
“Yes, as a matter of fact,” his cousin replied, in rather a grand voice. He knew Colin was dying to know. “He’d written something from the bible, in red, after every single entry. And he’d written it backwards.”
“Could you work it out?” Colin asked, more and more intrigued.
“Oh yes,” Oliver said airily. “Easy as anything. It’s mirror writing. Anyone can do it, once they’ve got the knack.”
“Go on then, what did it say?”
“‘Oh God, wherefore art thou absent from us so long’,” quoted Oliver. “‘Save me, for the waters have entered my soul’. Things like that. They were all the same, all about being cut off from the land of the living.”
“Heavens,” Colin muttered dumbly. “Why write that sort of thing in a diary?”
Oliver pulled a face. “Search me. Perhaps he’s brooding over something … perhaps he feels guilty. He looks guilty, don’t you think? He’s got that shifty look round his eyes.”
Colin tried to recall Grierson’s face. They’d only seen the man once. “I don’t know,” he said thoughtfully. “I thought he was rather striking, as a matter of fact, but definitely unhappy-looking. Why write backwards though? That’s bizarre.”
“Witches did things back to front,” Oliver said solemnly. “To undo the power of good.”
“Oh Oll, surely you’re not saying—”
“I’m not saying anything, yet,” the boy cut in impatiently. “I’m just telling you they did, that’s all. It’s worth remembering.”
There was a sudden tap on the door.
“That’ll be Prill,” Colin said, whispering just in case Aunt Phyllis was creeping about somewhere. “She wanted to talk to you as well.”
“Wait a minute.” Spread over Oliver’s bed was a navy-blue T-shirt with a collection of small bones on it. They were arranged in a definite pattern but Oliver had scooped them all up into a polythene bag before Colin could stop him.
“What did you do that for?” he said in frustration. “You said they were important, in – in your diary …” He went red.
“Not sure about them yet,” Oliver replied curtly. “Anyway, Prill’s squeamish. Don’t go on about them.” He shoved the bag under his pillow.
“Mr Grierson’s out there,” Prill said in a low voice, coming inside and shutting the door firmly. “I was just leaving my room, and I saw him. What’s he doing down here?”
“Eavesdropping probably,” Colin muttered. “We think there’s something peculiar about him.”
“You can say that again. I think he’s more than peculiar, I think he’s unhinged. He’s so violent, when he speaks to you, he sort of hisses. Allie’s absolutely terrified of him.”
“He’s got the devil in him,” Oliver announced flatly. “Duncan Ross said that, and for once I agree with him.”
The other two stared at him. “You don’t mean literally, Oll? What on earth are you talking about?” Colin said at last.
“I don’t know, quite,” Oliver said evenly, cupping his chin in his hands. “I just know there’s something wrong here, but I’m not at all sure it’s his fault. This awful behaviour’s not really typical apparently. He doesn’t usually rage quite so much at people, according to what Ma’s heard from Granny MacCann. He’s always been a loner, at least, he has since his wife died.”
“Well, he’s foul to the Rosses,” Colin said quietly. “Really foul.”
Oliver didn’t reply, he was obviously thinking about what might have soured the man, over the years. “His wife fell off a horse and was killed,” he informed them, “when their child was four.”
“Helen,” Prill murmured sadly, remembering the rocking-horse room.
“Yes, Helen. Well, that can’t have been much fun for him, being left on his own and everything, and he’s fallen out with her now, because she married someone he didn’t approve of. Then there’s the potty old mother, he looked after her for years and years. When he was a boy she used to drive him to church three times every Sunday, and make him learn great chunks of the Bible off by heart. If he got anything wrong she hit him. Well, that’s what Granny MacCann told Ma. No wonder he never goes to church these days.”
Colin and Prill exchanged sly glances. It sounded so like Oliver, an elderly religious mother, and being forced to go to church, and having to learn pieces of the Bible. Aunt Phyllis did that to him.
Oliver was still thinking of those red back to front bits in Grierson’s diary but he kept silent. Hugo Grierson had chosen the most agonized verses of the Psalms he could think of. Nothing cheerful like “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord” or “The Lord is My Shepherd”. He must be deeply guilty about something. What had he done? Had he got rich by embezzling other people’s money, or had he killed somebody? Lagg Castle was a perfect place for a murder, all those echoing corridors, all those pine forests outside, to hide the body in …
“Why were you so against those stones being moved, Oll?” Colin’s voice jerked him back to reality. “We could see you didn’t want them touched. That’s why we’ve come, really.”
“And because of what went on in the forest,” Oliver added firmly. “You’d better tell me what did happen, hadn’t you? I mean when you were on your own.”
Their ten year old cousin, undersized and feeble, now spoke with immense authority. There had been moments like this before, times when they almost feared Oliver, times when those curious pale eyes of his saw so much more in events than the eyes of ordinary people.
“Someone jumped on my back,” Colin said blankly, going cold at the very thought of it. “Someone I couldn’t see leapt on me, and dug their fingers into my neck, and … they were so light and quick about it I – I thought it was you.”
He expected some outraged response from poor Oliver who’d already had his diary read, and his private thoughts laid bare, but the boy didn’t seem at all angry. His face had darkened and he was obviously pursuing rather a different line of thought.
“So she is out,” he said, in a small voice, and he scratched his head thoughtfully.
“Who’s ‘out’?” demanded Prill, bewildered.
“Aggie Ross.”
“Oh, Oll,” Colin said impatiently. “That’s nuts. We’ve no idea who Aggie Ross is. She may just be some crony of Granny MacCann’s, or a relation of Duncan’s, for all we know.”
“And you can’t take what she says too seriously,” Prill chipped in. “I mean she’s so doddery. She’s probably wandering in her mind. Old people like her get all kinds of weird ideas.”
“She seemed perfectly sane and sensible to me,” Oliver said coldly, remembering how the Blakemans had cracked jokes about her being a witch. “’Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live’,” he said aloud. “Wonder how that comes into it?”
Colin looked at him keenly. “I saw that too. It was embroidered on that sampler behind the cabinet.”
“Perhaps Aggie Ross was a witch,” muttered Oliver.
“And perhaps that cairn was the remains of her house.”
“And we’ve broken into it,” Colin said, “and set her free. Is that what you’re getting at?”
“Could be.”
There was a long embarrassed silence. Oliver had had strange ideas before, but this was fantastic.
“If I’m right,” he went on, talking more to himself than to the others, “she won’t leave us alone. Something else will happen. You’ll see. Unless of course we take all the stones back again.”
Colin stared at him. He could just imagine what Angus Ross would say if a small boy asked him to dismantle a newly-repaired stone wall, to pacify a nonexistent witch.
They were still sitting there, looking at one another in blank confusion, when the door burst open and Aunt Phyllis appeared. She was not pleased.
“Ten thirty,” she snapped, consulting her watch. “What’s this, may I ask? A mothers’ meeting? Colin, Prill, off to bed at once! Lights out, Oliver, you know the rules. Have you cleaned your teeth?”
“Yes, Mother,” said a muffled voice from under the eiderdown. “And brushed my hair.”
He listened to Colin’s door bang shut, then to Prill’s. Ten minutes later he heard his mother climb into bed. They had adjoining rooms and the walls were very thin, only plasterboard partitions dividing up what had once been a vast storage area in the basement.
Soon she was snoring steadily. Oliver got out his diary, switched a little torch on, and re-read it. Then he lay back, thinking about witches, and about Aggie Ross and Granny MacCann.
Ma wouldn’t let him read spooky books, and she’d be very disturbed if she thought that he was getting seriously interested in witchcraft. She was a devout woman and the Bible warned against meddling with what it called “the powers of darkness”. But the text was there, on that sampler. What could it mean?
“Save me, Oh God, for the waters are come in, unto my soul.” Oliver had written it down in small neat capitals. The words filled him with sadness for Hugo Grierson, shut up all alone in this ugly old house. Why did he torment himself so? And why did he use mirror-writing? That struck him as extremely peculiar. Witches did things backwards. It seemed that the beauty of the sea and the woodlands of Lagg, instead of gladdening the man’s heart plunged him into black despair. It was a lovely place, but there was a kind of brooding sorrow about it all.
Oliver was tired, but he always read a little at night, to get himself off to sleep. He grinned as he heard his mother’s even snoring, and shone his high intensity pocket torch on the pages of his book. He’d smuggled it up here without her seeing it. It was The Bumper Annual of Great Horror Stories.
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_da3949c3-0ad1-5e07-9be4-91d4664a70fe)
At the other end of the stone passage Prill had just sat up in bed. She was annoyed because it had taken her a long time to get off to sleep after that conversation with Oliver, and her hot water bottle had gone cold – a hot water bottle in August – but it was chilly in the dungeons at night. Then, just as she was drifting off at last, Aunt Phyllis had woken her up again.
When she’d opened her eyes she’d been dimly aware of footsteps coming and going, shuffling sort of steps, the kind you make if you slither along in flat rubber shoes. Aunt Phyllis had several pairs. She was obsessed about not making any unnecessary noise. Then Prill heard her singing softly to herself.
What on earth was the woman doing? She’d go mad if any of the children went round singing at one in the morning. She’d report it to the management (Dad), who’d warned them all that Mr Grierson was a funny customer and had to be handled with care. Yet here she was, singing at dead of night, and creeping up and down. Was she looking under all their doors, perhaps, to check that they’d obeyed lights out? Prill couldn’t understand it.
As she listened, though, she realized that it couldn’t be her aunt singing. It must be the radio, or a tape perhaps. But that didn’t make sense. Nobody had brought a tape recorder and they certainly didn’t broadcast church services in the middle of the night … Prill began to feel uneasy.
She crept out of bed, stood in the middle of the room, and listened carefully. The voice was a woman’s, young and sweet, and it had a distinct Scots accent. She was singing a hymn, very slowly and mournfully, something Prill had never heard before:
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