The Secret of Crickley Hall

that her son wasn't dead. 'Cam… Cam… and I… we were so, so close. Some of the time—no, most of the time we even knew—we even knew what the other one was thinking, something I don't share with my daughters.'

Eve raised her left hand, her fingers straight and joined together. Then she lifted the right one, putting both hands together, palms facing inwards towards herself.

Lili Peel looked at them, mystified.

'You see the little finger on my right hand?' Eve said, jabbing that hand forward an inch. 'You see? It's much, much shorter than the little finger of my left hand.' She joined both hands again, both little fingers side by side.

The psychic saw that Eve was correct: there was a marked difference in the sizes of the smallest fingers, the one on the right far shorter than the one on the left. But she shook her head, not understanding.

Eve dropped her hands into her lap. 'A medium, a credible one I interviewed a long time ago, noticed how my right little finger was shorter than usual and it was she who told me to compare both hands. I suppose I'd never really thought about it before; I'd noticed, but had just accepted the difference, it was of no consequence. But the medium, who'd impressed me during the interview, told me it was a sign that I had the capacity for psychic ability, but that I'd never bothered to use it.'

She briefly showed her right hand again. 'When I informed her my very young son's hands were the same, she said it was a sign that we shared a telepathic link. And it made sense to me. That was why we often knew what the other was thinking, how Cam was always aware when I'd been hurt, even if it was only a stubbed toe. He could be at playschool or somewhere off with his father and he'd know it and would ask me about it when he got home. He was only a toddler, but he would know my moods instantly, whether I was happy or sad, and he'd act appropriately. I didn't sense things in quite the same way he did; his ability, maybe because he's just a child and his mind is still clear and open to such things, has always been stronger than mine. I'd always considered my own sensing of him to be just maternal instinct anyway, even though it wasn't the same between my daughters and me.'

The other woman attempted to calm Eve, who had become quite agitated again. 'Wait, wait a minute.' She held up her own hand to stop her and dropped it again. 'If you both share this extrasensory gift, then why hasn't your son contacted you by now? You might feel within yourself that he's alive—and I'm sorry to be so harsh—but why hasn't he let you know?'

'But he has, don't you see? True, I haven't received what you might call a clear 'mental message' from him, but I think he's been trying to let me know he's alive ever since he disappeared.'

'You're sure of this?'

'No, I can't be sure! How could I be? I've had my doubts since he's been gone, but that's only natural. I've always come back to the feeling—the sensing— that Cam is still here, though. What's more, something happened on Sunday that confirmed those feelings, something that prompted me to come to you.'

One hand clutching the edge of the small desk, Eve went on to describe the events of two days ago, that early Sunday afternoon when she had dozed on the couch in Crickley Hall's sitting room: how Cam—she was certain it was Cam even if she hadn't actually seen him; her deepest inner feelings couldn't be wrong—had touched and soothed her after she had been frightened by something dark… something evil that was somehow connected to the house itself. And then waking to find Cam's photograph had fallen onto the floor. She stared earnestly into the psychic's green eyes.

'I knew it was my son who made the bad thing go away,' she insisted. 'I couldn't have imagined it all.'

Behind her, Eve heard the shop door open, followed by the heavy trudge of boots on wood flooring. Lili Peel had already looked towards the entrance and Eve swivelled on the chair to see the customer who had entered. It was a woman, middle-aged, portly, a scarf round her head, a closed umbrella in one hand. She was wearing hiking boots, baggy corduroys tucked into the ankles.

The customer frowned back at the two figures sitting at the desk and something must have been conveyed to her, a feeling that she'd interrupted something important and private, for she quickly picked up a stone ornament on a shelf, turned it over in her hand, perhaps to find the price sticker on the bottom, and just as quickly returned it to the shelf. Without inspecting another thing, the woman left the shop, closing the door quietly as she went.

Lili Peel jumped in first before Eve could say another word. She rested her elbows on the desktop, clasping her hands together, and said: 'Because someone has the psychic gift, it doesn't necessarily follow that that person believes in ghosts.'

She lifted a hand again, palm towards Eve, who was about to interrupt.

'As it happens,' Lili Peel went on, 'I do believe in ghosts and the afterlife. So what I want to know is, what makes you so sure that what you saw or sensed wasn't, in fact, your son's spirit, his ghost? It would sound more reasonable to me. Spirits have been known to move material objects, so why not the photograph? Why do you think it was telepathy rather than contact with your dead son's ethereal spirit?'

Her eyes bore into Eve's with a coldness to them, a kind of brittle hardness that could not be easily broken.

'Because Cam gave me hope again,' Eve responded immediately. 'I had almost given up, almost come to believe Cameron was dead, I just couldn't find it within myself to accept it. My doubts have been steadily growing stronger these last few months; but on Sunday, after what happened, the feeling it left me with, I knew, just knew, Cam was alive and trying to contact me through his mind. He's trying to tell me where I can find him.'

The psychic was silent for a few moments, as if she didn't know how to react. Then those green eyes hardened once again. 'I'm sorry,' she said, 'but that's not enough.' Her tone was still curt, as if she were determined not to accept Eve's conviction. 'It doesn't mean your son is alive. The opposite, if anything.'

Eve's own voice became curt. 'What if I told you he was being helped by others?'

'What do you mean by that?'

Eve, undaunted by the younger woman's attitude and without a trace of self-doubt, went on to explain what had been happening in the house they were renting, the rappings, the small pools of water, the cellar door that refused to stay shut. She told the psychic about the running footsteps she and her family had heard coming from the attic dormitory. She told Lili Peel about the spinning top and the dancing children that she and Cally had witnessed, the small faces at the dormer windows. Eve told her that eleven children had perished in the house, drowned in the great flood of 1943.

'This house,' said Lili Peel. 'What's it called? It has a name, doesn't it, not a number?'

Eve was surprised by the question. 'Yes. It's called Crickley Hall. Do you know of it?'

A shadow seemed to pass over the psychic's face. She stared intently at Eve. 'I was told about the floods when I was last in Hollow Bay. When I gave my card to the shopkeeper to put in her window, she read it and said if I was a psychic I should go up to Crickley Hall. Plenty of ghosts up there, she said, then she told me about the flood and the children, and that nobody had ever stayed at Crickley Hall for long. It was an unhappy house, she said, and I thought that in a strange way she enjoyed telling me about it. I remember passing the place—across a short wooden bridge, the shopkeeper said, a mile or so up the lane—and I remember I shivered when I saw it. There was a terrible depression about the place, not unlike the depression that hangs over the village itself, only this was stronger, more concentrated.'

'Then you do think it could be haunted? Haunted by those poor children.'

'I didn't say that. I've never been inside, so I wouldn't know.'

'But you said there was an atmosphere—a depression—about it, which you felt even though you were only passing by.'

'Some houses are affected by the tragic things that happen in them. It's as if the walls retain the memory. It doesn't mean they're haunted, though.'

Lili Peel was silent for a few moments. Then, abruptly: 'No, I won't—I can't—help you.'

Eve was dismayed. After all she had told the psychic, how she'd poured out her heart to her and had thought she was being believed. Despite her curtness, Eve had thought Lili Peel was sympathetic. Now she was refusing to help her.

'Haven't I convinced you?' she asked at last, almost pleadingly.

'It isn't that, although I wonder why, if as you say your son and you have always shared a telepathic link, he