The Secret of Crickley Hall

His urgent fingers finally found the light switch and struck it down. The light almost seemed reluctant to fulfil its role, for it came on dimly at first, increasing in power in slow, progressive stages, taking seconds to glow brightly. It was as if the darkness itself had fought against it.

Only Eve and an unfamiliar fair-haired woman occupied the sitting room and both sat like pale statues, perfectly still as if scared rigid.

Only then did the fire flame back into life.

43: CONFLICT

Gabe let his anger rip.

'Tell me again what happened a few minutes ago. You say there was a ghost standing over Eve, but it disappeared when I came in the room with Loren and switched on the light.'

'I don't know that it was a ghost,' Lili replied evenly, avoiding the engineer's fierce gaze. 'It was an entity of some sort, that's all I can tell you, and it wished us harm. We both saw it, a… a black shape that was reaching for Eve until you disturbed it. Somehow it lost its power and faded. Maybe it was the lights that did it, I just don't know.'

'But you say the place is haunted.' Gabe glared at the psychic, concerned that Eve was being too easily influenced by her.

'Eleven children were drowned in this house over sixty years ago, Mr Caleigh. Now something is preventing their spirits from passing over. We have to help them, we have to find out what's blocking their progress, we have to help them go to where they're meant to be.'

Gabe stopped his pacing to look down at her.

If Lili felt intimidated, she did not show it. She went on: 'I also think your daughter is some kind of catalyst for the spirit children.'

'Come on…' Gabe groaned.

'It's not uncommon for astral spirits to use the pure psychic energy of young people—especially teenage or pre-teenage girls for some reason. The darkness and smell that was in this room went away when the light was turned on and Loren came in.'

Before he could interrupt, Lili asked a question. 'Has Loren felt unusually tired recently?'

'Why yes,' responded Eve, surprised. 'We all have, but especially Loren. She's complained of tiredness since we arrived here. We thought it was because of change of environment, or anxiety over starting at a new school. Or just, you know, part of the process of growing up.'

'She's at an age when her psychic energy is strong but all over the place. It's easily tapped into.'

Gabe's voice was incredulous. 'Are you saying our daughter is possessed?'

Lili shook her head vigorously. 'No, no, nothing like that. It's just a phenomenon that nobody can explain. You must've felt how cold it was in here earlier. It's because the spirits drain energy from the atmosphere itself. But their greatest source of power is from living people, particularly young people whose open minds have yet to be dulled by cynicism. That's why I turned towards spiritualism myself; I was used by a child ghost when I was a little girl—that was when I realized I had a special gift that no one else around me seemed to have.'

Gabe regarded Loren with concern. She had been allowed to remain in the room while her mother and the psychic related what had happened earlier because both he and Eve considered her mature enough to hear their discussion—after all, she had experienced some weird stuff herself in this place. Now he was beginning to regret the decision. Loren was sitting on the couch close to her mother and her eyes were intent on the psychic. Most kids believed in ghosts, he thought, but then many also believed in fairies. He returned his attention to the young blonde woman in the armchair.

'Listen, lady—'

'Her name's Lili,' Eve quickly interjected, annoyed at his rudeness—and his blunt refusal to accept what he was being told. 'Lili Peel.'

'Okay, sorry. I don't know what game you're playing, what interest you've got in all this, but you're twisting my wife's head. You got her believing everything you say.'

Eve was about to protest, but he held up a hand as if to ward her off.

'Now it so happens I don't believe in ghosts, never have, probably never will, but I admit something's going on here that isn't normal, so I guess you'd call it the paranormal. The house has certainly got bad vibes that I can't account for. But I do know you can't talk to the dead, not for real. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you're a phoney, I honestly believe you're sincere in what you say. I just don't go along with it and I don't want my wife and daughter to either. We got enough problems without this.'

'Then you explain the paranormal activity that's been going on since you got here,' Lili came back at him, 'all the things Eve has told me about.'

At last Lili was showing some defiance, thought Eve, secretly glad. Before, Lili had seemed a little cowed by Gabe's verbal disdain. Now she delivered her words with the same brittle coldness that she'd used when Eve had visited the shop yesterday.

'I can't,' said Gabe, shaking his head in frustration. 'I don't know. But I don't want it to be my family's problem.'

'You can't just walk away from it.'

'Watch us.'

'There are young children involved, lost children.'

'But not real kids.'

'They need our help.'

'Your help. We don't have that psychic thing.' The last two words were derisory.

'And if I can find your missing son at the same time?'

Gabe's mouth shut tight. His fists clenched.

'Lili spoke to Cam,' Eve said as if daring her husband to disbelieve. 'He knows we're here.'

Lili faltered. 'I… I didn't speak to him. Somehow our minds connected, that was all. It was as if he was searching and had finally found what he was looking for. It wasn't very clear, I couldn't be certain it was him. But I can try again. Not now—I feel as if I've been drained dry—but soon, maybe even tomorrow?'

'Forgive my cynicism'—he didn't sound in the least bit sorry—'but is that how you get your kicks, stringing gullible people along with your talk of contacting lost souls by mind-power?'

Eve was almost out of her seat. 'That's unfair! I went to Lili, not the other way round.'

'Okay, okay.' He held up a penitent hand. 'I'm just saying maybe she's even deluding herself, thinking she can talk to dead people or that she has telepathic powers. Look, I don't know how or why, but I think this house musters up hallucinations, even in sceptics like me.'

Eve shook her head in dismay. 'You think all this is our imagination? The footsteps in the attic, the knocking behind the empty cupboard doors? Gabe, I saw the spirits of those poor little children myself out there in the hall only two days ago. You think it's all self-delusion?'

'I've never been into this kinda stuff, so I don't know what it is. But something's going on here and we're not hanging around to find out what. It's none of our business, right?'

'How can you be—' Eve stopped in mid-sentence. Both Lili and Gabe had turned their attention to the open doorway behind her. She twisted round on the couch to see for herself, Loren following suit.

Cally stood in the opening, spongy Bart Simpson cuddled in one arm, the knuckles of her other hand rubbing at her sleepy eyes. With everything that had happened, Eve had completely forgotten about her youngest daughter napping upstairs. Cally had slept for a long time, far longer than usual.

'Mummy,' the five-year-old said plaintively. 'Why are the children so frightened?'

Outside, the clouds began to shed their load and rain drummed against the windows.

44: SIXTH NIGHT

It had been a difficult evening, Gabe and Eve barely speaking to one another for much of it. There was no shouting match (although in some ways that might have been better—it would have at least cleared the air), there was just a brooding awkwardness left between them following a brief argument after Lili Peel had departed. Even