House of Bones Read online

  The house itself was enormous, with turrets and balconies and gambrel roofs. Scaffolding had been erected on one side of the house but there was no sign of any workmen. All of the windows were dark and blank. High on the slated roof, a weathervane was stuck pointing NE, where the coldest winds came from.

  John and Lucy walked halfway up the drive, their footsteps crunching in the shingle. They stopped and listened. Inside the grounds of number 66 it was oddly quiet, even though there was a main road only a hundred metres away, and a children’s playground at the end of the street.

  “You’ve got the keys?” asked John, and Lucy held them up, swinging them on the end of her finger. “Let’s hope that Mr Cleat doesn’t notice they’re gone.”

  “He won’t. You won’t catch him daring to go through Mr Vane’s desk.”

  They approached the front steps, and cautiously climbed up them to the front door. The door itself was painted in blistered black, with a huge bronze knocker on it in the shape of a snarling animal’s face. “That’s welcoming,” said Lucy.

  John peered through one of the stained-glass panels in the door, one hand shielding his eyes, but all he could see was a blur of blood-red light.

  “Are we going in or not?” asked Lucy. “I haven’t got very much time, remember.”

  John nodded. “Let’s do it.” And Lucy slid the key into the lock, turned the handle and opened up the door. It didn’t groan, like a door in a horror film. Instead, it opened in total silence, which John found even creepier.

  “After you,” said Lucy.

  They stepped into the hallway. It was high and gloomy, with a checkered tile floor and dark oak panelling all around it. On the left-hand side stood a huge carved hall-stand, with hooks and mirrors and a place for propping umbrellas. On the right, a wide oak staircase led up to the first-floor landing. On its newel post stood a bronze statuette of a blindfolded woman holding up a torch.

  “Perhaps we’d better split up,” John suggested. “You take the upstairs and I’ll take the downstairs.”

  “I’m not splitting up,” said Lucy. “This place is far too spooky for me.”

  “All right, then. But we’d better be quick.”

  They walked into the living-room. It was enormous, with five huge windows overlooking the front of the house and the garden at the side. It had a cavernous marble fireplace and a chandelier that was cocooned in spiders’ webs. There was a rumpled, threadbare carpet in the middle of the floor, but the only furniture was a dilapidated chaise-longue and a small card-table.

  Their footsteps echoed as they crossed the room and opened the folding doors that led to the dining-room. Against the far wall stood a sideboard with a mirror behind it. John and Lucy approached it and looked at themselves. “I don’t look as scared as I feel,” said Lucy.

  They were just about to leave the room, however, when John caught a flicker of a shadow in the mirror behind him. He swung around, with the hairs on the back of his head fizzing with fright.

  “What’s the matter?” said Lucy. “John – what’s the matter?”

  “I think I saw somebody.”

  “What do you mean, you saw somebody? Don’t play games!”

  “I’m not! I promise you, I looked in the mirror and I saw somebody crossing the sitting-room behind us.”

  6

  He hurried across the sitting-room and back into the hallway. He looked left, and right, and then he looked up the stairs. Lucy followed him.

  “I think we’d better leave,” she said. “If there’s somebody here, they could be anybody. A tramp or a squatter or somebody like that. They could be violent.”

  “But I can’t understand why I didn’t hear them. They didn’t make any noise at all.”

  “John, I think this is a really bad idea and I think it’s time we went.”

  But John ignored her. His heart was beating fast and he was excited as well as scared. He walked to the bottom of the stairs and called out, “Hello! Can you hear me? Is anybody there? We’re looking for Mr Rogers!”

  His voice echoed around the house, going from room to empty room and finding no reply. He turned back to Lucy and said, “Let’s try upstairs. If they’ve got Mr Rogers tied up anywhere, that’s where he’ll probably be.”

  “Do we have to?” she said.

  “Supposing he’s there, all tied up, or injured, and we just walk away and leave him because we’re scared?”

  John started to climb the stairs, and then Lucy reluctantly followed him. They reached the galleried landing and peered back down to the hallway floor which looked like a chessboard. John said, “I’ll check all the bedrooms on this side, you take the other side.”

  “What shall I do if I find anything? Will a scream be all right?”

  John took the west side of the house. The first door he opened was a large airing cupboard, stacked with yellowing sheets and pillowcases. The next was a bathroom, with a huge green bath. The tap must have been dripping for years because the bottom was filled with a dark, rusty stain, as if somebody had been murdered in it.

  He pushed the door open a little wider and stepped inside. There was a shower cubicle behind the door, with frosted glass doors. Through the frosting he was sure that he could make out a dark, hunched shape. He looked at the washbasin and saw his reflection in the discoloured mirror on the wall. His eyes were wide and he looked extremely pale.

  He approached the shower cubicle cautiously and tried to see what was inside it. It looked as if it were reddish-brown, and bent over, the size of a large child. Behind him, the tap kept up its monotonous dripping. Plick – plack – plick – plack.

  He didn’t know whether he dared to open the shower cubicle or not. Whatever was inside it, it wasn’t Mr Rogers – unless it was part of Mr Rogers. His heart was racing so fast that it was almost tripping itself up, and his mouth had gone dry.

  Perhaps he ought to go and find Lucy. But then what would Lucy think of him, if he was too scared to open up the shower himself?

  He reached out and took hold of the cubicle doorhandle. He tried to open it quietly, but it suddenly popped open with a sharp bang, and the door juddered in its frame. He took three deep breaths, and then he opened the door wide and looked inside.

  A damp roll of bathroom carpet lay at the bottom of the shower-tray, covered in greyish mould.

  John almost laughed in relief. But as he stepped back, he thought he glimpsed something in the mirror over the washbasin. A quick, furtive shadow – as if somebody had just been standing close behind him but had now darted out of the room.

  He went back out into the corridor, and looked left and right, but there was nobody there. He called out, “Lucy? Are you OK?” but there was no reply.

  He walked along to the next door and opened it. The room was gloomy, and smelled of mothballs. John was reluctant to go inside, and stayed in the corridor with his hand on the doorknob. “Hello? Mr Rogers? Is there anybody there?”

  No answer. Which was hardly surprising, if he were tied up and gagged – or worse, if he were dead. John waited for a moment and then opened the door a little wider. “Hello? Mr Rogers?”

  Still no answer. He cautiously stepped into the room and looked around. It was a bedroom – obviously not the master bedroom, but large enough for two single beds. The yellowish chintz curtains were drawn tight, so that the room was illuminated only by a thin, sickly light.

  On one side of the room stood a huge walnut-veneered wardrobe. The veneer had been cut so that the grain formed strange wolfish faces, with knots for eyes. Even the roses on the curtains looked as if they were misshapen dwarves. Between the two beds hung a large damp-spotted etching showing a line of monks shuffling towards a ruined abbey, their faces completely concealed by their hoods.

  John was about to leave the room when he saw that one of the beds had been made up completely flat, with nothing but a blanket and a single pillow on it, while the other bed was humped up, as if somebody were lying in it, sleeping.

  It mus
t be a bolster, he thought. Or maybe just a heap of bedding. But he knew that he would have to go and make sure. There was no point in looking for Mr Rogers if he didn’t look everywhere.

  He stood beside the bed and looked at the hump beneath the blankets. It didn’t seem to be moving, so whatever it was, it wasn’t asleep. He leaned closer and held his breath, in case he could hear it breathing, but there was nothing. Only the faint sound of the traffic, and Lucy, closing a bedroom door on the opposite side of the house.

  He took hold of the top edge of the blanket and drew it a little way back. A bird suddenly landed on the gutter outside the bedroom window and he dropped the blanket in fright. But then he picked it up again, and slowly tugged it aside. Underneath, there was a shape swathed in linen sheets.

  Please don’t let it be a body, he prayed. Whatever it is, please don’t let it be a body.

  He started to unwind the sheets. Whatever was wrapped up inside them was very heavy – almost too heavy for a body. Yet he thought he could feel shoulders, and arms – and as he pulled back the top of the sheet he revealed something that made him feel as if cold centipedes were crawling down his back.

  It was a face. An utterly white face. Its eyes were open and it was staring at him. It looked like a man in his thirties, quite handsome in a thin, unusual way, but with a sheen on his skin that wasn’t at all natural, and an expression of terrible calmness that frightened John more than anything he had ever seen in his life.

  He tried to say, “Lucy,” but his mouth didn’t seem to work.

  The man continued to stare at him and said nothing. Was he alive? Was he dead? John didn’t want to touch him but he didn’t want to leave him, either. Supposing he jumped up from the bed and came running after him?

  John leaned forward and whispered, “Are you—?” but even as he leaned forward he realized that the man was neither alive nor dead. It was a statue, an incredibly lifelike statue, with a face carved out of polished ivory.

  John reached out and touched the statue’s chest and under the sheets it was hard and unyielding. He knocked it and it sounded like wood. He was relieved, but all the same the statue was so realistic that he still found it unnerving.

  Lucy came in. “I’ve looked in all of the other bedrooms,” she said. “I haven’t found anything except a lot of old furniture.”

  “Look at this,” said John.

  Lucy stared at the statue, startled. “He’s not—?”

  “No, it’s made out of wood, that’s all. But it scared me to death when I first took the sheet off.”

  “Isn’t it strange?” said Lucy, touching its forehead with her fingertips. “I mean, who would want to make a statue like this, and then leave it lying in a bed?”

  “I don’t know. This whole place is strange. I keep thinking I’m seeing things.”

  Lucy covered up the statue’s face and John replaced the blanket as he had found it. “Let’s take a look at the other rooms. Then we’d better think about getting back to the office.”

  They went into the master bedroom, which had its own bathroom and a balcony overlooking the back garden. There were no beds in here, but only the impressions in the brown carpet where beds had once been, and a few oddly-shaped stains, like a map of Greece. The back garden was as overgrown and derelict as the front. A stone angel stood on top of a leaf-cluttered fountain, with part of her left wing missing. A half-collapsed shed was tangled with dried-up wisteria.

  “It’s funny, isn’t it?” said Lucy. “This house is so abandoned and yet I still get the feeling that somebody lives here. I mean, I feel like I’m trespassing.”

  They checked two smaller bedrooms, both of which were damp and sad. In one of them, the pale green paper was peeling off the wall and there was a furry grey growth up by the ceiling. In the other, a picture of Jesus hung over the bed, all the colour faded out of it by damp and sunlight.

  Under the window stood a small bookcase. There were six or seven little china figurines on it, ballet dancers. Every one of them had its head broken off. On the shelf below there were several copies of the Reader’s Digest and the carcass of a Bible with half of its pages torn out.

  The bed was covered with an old pink quilt, in which John was sure that he could still see the impression of somebody’s body. It was as if they might have been lying here only a few moments ago. He laid his hand on the indentation but it wasn’t warm. All the same, he had the strongest feeling that they weren’t alone in the house.

  “Let’s go,” said Lucy. “There isn’t anybody here. Not unless you count our wooden friend in the bedroom.”

  “We haven’t tried the attic yet. Nor the cellar.”

  “I don’t think I want to, either. Come on, John, or else I’m going to be late.”

  They walked along the upstairs corridor back towards the landing. As they did so, however, John thought that he heard a strange dragging noise coming along the corridor behind them, and he suddenly stopped and turned around.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Lucy.

  “I don’t know … I thought I heard something.”

  Lucy frowned back along the corridor. “There’s nobody there. It must have been your heart beating.”

  They continued towards the stairs, but as soon as they did so, John heard the noise again, closer this time, as if something was softly hurrying up behind them, intent on catching them before they could turn around. He stopped again, and Lucy stopped, too.

  “I heard it,” she said, in a voice as white as paper.

  John hesitated for a moment, listening. The corridor was silent, but he had an overwhelming feeling that there were other people here, very close by, waiting for them to turn their backs.

  He took hold of Lucy’s hand and took a cautious step further, and then another. Then he stopped again, and listened some more.

  He was sure that somebody was standing only centimetres away from him, steadily breathing, yet he couldn’t see anything at all, not even a ghostly shadow.

  He took another step – and, as he did so, he trod on something hard. He looked down and saw that it was a ring. He bent down and picked it up, and held it out so that Lucy could see it. A man’s wedding band, made out of twin ropes of yellow and white gold.

  “This is Mr Rogers’ ring,” John whispered.

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “Positive. I noticed it when I gave him the key.”

  “Then he must have been here, mustn’t he?”

  John nodded, looking around him. The atmosphere in the house, already threatening, began to tighten, as if a thunderstorm were imminent. Taking hold of Lucy’s hand again, he backed slowly towards the head of the stairs, and he was conscious that they were being closely followed. He almost expected to feel breath on his cheek.

  “What is it?” asked Lucy, and she was clearly terrified.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what it is.”

  “It’s a ghost” she said. “I swear it.”

  “There’s no such thing.”

  He reached behind him and felt the newel post on the top of the bannisters. “Let’s make a run for it,” he said. “One – two – three—”

  They turned and hurtled down the stairs, taking two and three at a time. The instant they did so, they heard the someone coming after them, jumping just as fast. Lucy screamed and almost lost her balance, but she managed to grab the handrail to steady herself.

  They bounded down to the hallway and ran across to the front door without looking back. John opened it up, and they rushed outside, down the steps, and out along the shingle driveway. The door slammed behind them with a deafening bang.

  7

  They reached Lucy’s car and scrambled into it. Lucy juggled with the keys and dropped them on to the floor, but John scooped them up for her and she managed to start the engine.

  “You’re right!” John panted. “It is haunted! I don’t believe in ghosts but there’s a ghost in there!”

  “Let’s just go,” said Lucy. Sh
e swerved out into the road, nearly knocking an old man off his bicycle. “Oi!” he shouted after them.

  They sped through the mid-morning traffic back to Streatham High Road. “We’ll have to take this ring to the police,” said John.

  “Oh, yes. And where are you going to say that you found it?”

  “What are you talking about? I’m going to tell them the truth, that’s all.”

  “And what do you think Mr Vane’s going to do when he finds out that we’ve borrowed his key and gone snooping around one of his precious houses? He’s going to sack us, that’s what. And I don’t know about you, but I need this job.”

  “So what else can we do? Mr Rogers could still be in the house somewhere, couldn’t he? He could still be alive. What if he starves to death, because we were too scared to tell the police?”

  “We could give them an anonymous tip-off,” Lucy suggested. “You know, like they do on Crimewatch.”

  John held up Mr Rogers’ ring and inspected it from all angles. “I suppose we could. And we could find out more about 66 Mountjoy Avenue, too. Mr Vane must have some kind of file on it.”

  “You’re not going to start rifling again, are you? You’re going to get yourself in terrible trouble.”

  John didn’t say anything. He was thinking about the thing that had followed them down the empty corridor, and the statue lying on the bed. He couldn’t get the statue’s pale ivory face out of his mind – its unblinking stare; its eerie, terrifying calm. He wondered if it were the statue of a real man, or if the sculptor simply created the most frightening face he could think of.

  During his lunchbreak, he went out to a callbox on the corner of Fern wood Avenue and dialled 999. An old woman in a flowery dress arrived outside just as his call was being answered, and she continued to glare at him all the way through his conversation.

  “Emergency. Which service, please?”

  “I want to talk to somebody about Mr Rogers who’s gone missing in Streatham.”

  There was a pause. The old woman glared at him so he turned his back on her.