‘Oh, God. Do you have to? Supposing he’s out there, waiting for you?’
‘Well, this time I’ll be ready for him. Or it. Or whatever the hell he is.’
‘All right. But shout out if anything happens, and I’ll wake up Martin.’
‘I think Martin could still be downstairs. I didn’t hear him come up to bed. Mind you, I did drop off for a bit. Maybe he came up later. But he sounded like he was pissed as a newt, didn’t he?’
‘I know. And so aggressive.’ She paused, and took hold of his hand. ‘Sometimes I find it really hard to believe that you and he are brothers.’
*
Rob tugged his jeans back on and pushed his bare feet into his tan leather shoes, although he didn’t bother to tie up the laces. He went out into the corridor and switched on the light. As he had expected, there was nobody there. Nobody visible, anyway.
He walked along to the landing, where he stopped and listened. No whispering. Only the thin persistent whistling of the wind, and the faint rattling of a door somewhere downstairs, and the low sad moaning of the chimneys. He went along to the end bedroom door, next to the stained-glass window. He tried the handle, just to make sure that it was still locked.
It was so dark outside that he could hardly see the figure of Old Dewer in his black cloak, with his back turned. But he couldn’t help thinking of the words the presence that had somehow entered their bedroom had whispered to him. ‘Trespassing? You can’t trespass if you don’t have no choice.’
What had he meant by that? That he couldn’t leave Allhallows Hall, even if he wanted to? That he was trapped here? That was what it had sounded like.
He walked back to the landing and paused for a few seconds at the top of the stairs, listening. He thought he had caught the sound of somebody whispering down in the hallway, but it could have been the wind, which seemed to have changed direction. The flap of the letterbox in the front door had started to clap, intermittently, as if there was somebody outside in the porch who wanted to be let in. Somebody old and tired, who barely had the strength to knock.
Rob went downstairs and switched on the light in the hallway. Katharine’s boots were lying where she had tugged them off, and her coat was slung awkwardly over the back of the chair. The letterbox clapped again, twice, but Rob resisted the temptation to go and open the front door to see if there was anybody there. All reason told him that it was only the wind.
He went into the drawing room. Fine white ash from the fire had blown across the hearthrug, but the fire itself had died out. Martin’s navy-blue overcoat was spread out on the sofa as if he had been lying on it, its blue satin lining creased, but there was no sign of Martin. He must have sobered up enough to stagger up the stairs and go to bed.
Rob looked into the kitchen and the scullery and then he went through to the library. He even checked the downstairs lavatory, with its high old-fashioned cistern and its framed postcards by the saucy seaside artist Donald McGill. Herbert Russell had collected these postcards for years, and found them hilarious. Hardly anything else made him laugh so much, except seeing other people accidentally spill their drink into their lap, or stumble over and hurt themselves, or scald their hands under a boiling hot tap.
Before he went back upstairs, Rob went over to the bricked-up door to the cellar, which was next to the door to the library. The oak door frame was still there, but the bricks had been plastered over and papered and painted. From the state of the plaster, this had clearly been done a long time ago, maybe more than a century, but there was no record in the deeds or local history as to exactly when, or why.
Rob stood in front of it for a while, although he didn’t really know what he was expecting to see, or to hear. He even pressed his ear to the plaster, in case there was whispering on the other side, but there was nothing. Since the cellar was sealed up, nobody could have come out of it, or gone back in; but then nobody could have entered their bedroom through a closed door, either.
He switched off the lights and went back upstairs. As he climbed in next to her, Vicky said, ‘Anything?’
‘No. And Martin must have managed to get himself to bed.’
‘Maybe there’s something in this house that makes us hallucinate. My grandmother was almost blind by the time she was eighty, but she used to see people and animals who weren’t there. She saw a clown’s head in her bathroom basin once. Charles Bonnet syndrome, that’s what they call it.’
‘But that’s only seeing things, isn’t it? It’s because you’re nearly blind. She never heard anything, did she? She didn’t get pushed over and kicked?’
‘No, I don’t think so. If she did, she didn’t tell me about it. But I’m only trying to be like you, Rob. I’m only trying to think of some rational explanation. Even if there isn’t one.’
18
Rob tried to keep his eyes open, but after about half an hour he fell deeply asleep. He dreamed that he was outside on the moor, completely naked, with an icy wind slicing against his skin, stiffening his nipples and shrinking his scrotum and bringing him up in goose pimples. He was desperate to find his way back to the house before anybody saw him like this, and he was cursing his own stupidity at having forgotten to put on any clothes before he came out.
He had reached the front driveway and he could feel the sharp gravel underneath the soles of his feet. But then he heard Timmy calling out to him,
