escape him the moment he saw the ghost.
He leapt out of bed and cowered in the corner of the room where he stayed, blubbering, until his adoptive mother burst through the door and ran to kneel beside him. It took Dorothy more than an hour to convince her adoptive son there was nobody else in the room.
His behaviour from then on was alarming. He twitched every time she touched him and shrank away when she tried to take him in her arms and comfort him (now widowed, Dorothy needed comforting herself, especially from the son she had always longed for). Gordon wouldn't speak to her either and he refused to meet her gaze: he hunched his shoulders, leaning over the walking stick he now used (the break in his leg had never healed properly), and his eyes darted craftily as if he had some secret to keep. He became agitated whenever it was time for bed and for three nights running she had to rush into his room, brought there by his dreadful screams. On each occasion she found him huddled in the corner of the well-lit room, his body shaking, his eyes wide.
Only then did Dorothy seek medical help for him and her GP immediately sent the boy for psychiatric treatment.
'They'll soon sort him out,' was the doctor's opinion.
But once in the mental home, Gordon, like Magda Cribben before him, withdrew into himself even more, blocking out the world so that nothing could reach him, especially the lunatics he was forced to share the ward with. He could not escape the ghost, though, nor the nightmare dreams of Crickley Hall, but in time he learnt to control his reaction to them.
When Cribben's ghost now appeared, Gordon would stifle his own screams with a fist to his mouth and a hand over his eyes. The horror was still there, but self-preservation had always been his strength. He wanted to leave this place of mad people and to do so he knew he had to appear inwardly and outwardly normal. He did not care for their drugs and physical restraints.
When the nightmares came, he learned to be still when he awoke from them, not to cry out or complain, to weep silently beneath the bedclothes until repetition hardened him even against tears.
He could not tell his personal psychiatrist of what he had done and what he had witnessed at Crickley Hall—if he did he probably would not have been released for years, if ever. So when he came out of what had become his own self-imposed shell, he made up stories of explosions and houses toppling down onto him and big holes opening up to swallow him and the sound of sirens, air-raid warnings constantly ringing in his head.
The medical profession had become used to dealing with shell-shocked victims during and after the war, and the psychiatrist easily recognized the condition in Gordon Pyke. He also knew of the boy's history, how he had suffered from amnesia, forgetting how he had become parentless and alone: who knew what trauma he had endured before? Gordon had finally started to talk freely and seemed to be making a sudden, rapid recovery. After five months of confinement, Gordon was released.
However, the relationship with his adoptive mother was never the same again: after all, it was she who had agreed to his internment in a mental hospital. He rarely spoke to her now and, as he grew older and taller, his attitude towards her became menacing. She started to be afraid of him.
Although the war was long over, conscription was still mandatory for eighteen-year-old males and when he reached that age, he received his call-up papers for National Service. Fortunately, as he saw it, he was rejected by the military because of his invalid status—he still used a walking stick. His psychiatric history would probably have excluded him anyway. So now, Gordon Pyke, who had decent school reports (ironically, he was placed in a lower year—which was more suited to his real age—because of his absence from school due to injury and time in the psychiatric hospital), found a job as a junior librarian in a library not far from where he lived.
The hauntings and nightmares continued through the years and they were always terrifying, even though he had become used to them. Perhaps inevitably, the hauntings aroused in him an interest in the supernatural. Were ghosts possible, did he
It caused him to wonder if that was why Augustus Cribben was plaguing him now. If that were the case, then why did the ghost appear to him? How could he help Cribben resolve something left unfinished? It was a question to which Pyke had no answer.
•
Gordon Pyke, once known as Maurice Stafford, shifted restlessly in the driver's seat of the Mondeo. His leg was giving him particular gyp tonight. Always did in cold or wet weather, but this was worse than ever. He rubbed his knee with his big hand. He had to curb his impatience. Let the family settle in for the night.
He wiped mist from the side window with the sleeve of his coat and peered through. Rainwater was running fast down the lane, creating its own shallow river. Lightning flared and the crack of thunder soon followed, so loud it made him want to duck his head.
This is so right, he thought, so much like the night he and Magda had fled Crickley Hall. Would there be another flood? he wondered. Well, that would make things perfect.
To restrain his agitation, he went back to his memories.
•
His adoptive mother, Dorothy Pyke, with whom he still shared a house, had passed away from a fatal dose of flu that led to pneumonia when Gordon was twenty-eight. It was a relief to him—they had despised each other for years. Surprisingly, in view of their strained relationship, she left the house and the small amount of money she had managed to save from her widow's pension to him. But then, who else did she have to leave anything to? He soon sold the house and moved into a small rented flat, placing the modest amount that came from the sale and the money he had inherited into a deposit account in a bank.
Now that he could afford it—his salary as a librarian was pitifully low—Pyke took to visiting prostitutes, particularly searching out the older variety who were more than happy to provide the kind of service he required. In fact, it made the job easier for them because they did not have to pretend enjoyment. The deal was that they had to keep perfectly still and exhibit no passion whatsoever while he used their bodies. (Initially, he had tried the younger whores but was always disgusted by their squirming and sighing, feigned or otherwise.)
For a while—less than a year—he was married. Pyke, with his apparent courtly manners and his gentle eyes, was attractive to certain women. He was tall, and well built too, which added to the attraction. His new wife, Madeleine, was almost pretty despite the thick horn-rimmed glasses she wore and the size of her teeth that kept her lips permanently parted. An avid reader, she was a member of his library and her borrowing of books increased after he had mildly flirted with her one day as he stamped her choices for that week. At first enthralled with her husband, she did her best to please him, but as the weeks went by she began to resent his lengthy silences and his constant brooding. In sleep he was often unsettled, sometimes waking up with a start, his pyjamas damp with perspiration. But never did he explain his dreams to her.
His method of making love was decidedly odd and a great disappointment to her. He demanded that she remain passive when they had sex (Madeleine was a virgin and hadn't known quite what to expect, though she was sure it wasn't this), that she should not respond in any way to his attentions. If she expressed the slightest passion, if she breathed too sharply or too deeply, he would abruptly bring the engagement to an end. Although he did not rage at her, he would become even more distant.
It did not take long for her to realize that all his good manners and apparent kindliness were a sham, meant for others to think well of him, whereas in reality he was a cold, remote man who was indifferent to everybody else. But what finally repelled her was when he told her she was to submit to beatings. With a stick. A stick that had lain hidden on top of the bedroom wardrobe, a thin yellowish stick that must have been purchased from a school supplies outlet, for one end was crooked so it looked like a headmaster's cane.
She refused. He beat her anyway.
Madeleine, her back, arms and legs stiff with throbbing red stripes beneath her blouse and skirt, packed her bags and left him the following day. Pyke didn't care much: he had expected this plain and timid little thing to be pliant to his will. Because of her dowdiness, her lack of glamour, she would be grateful to be moulded to his liking. Her wails of protest and her pitiful tears when he flogged her that night had spoilt his pleasure, for he had begun to
