‘But Ada says she sees the spirits of dead people, doesn’t she?’ said Vicky.
‘What Ada sees is the resonance that people sometimes leave behind after their death, especially in the walls of the houses in which they used to live. She calls it the Otherland, although I like to think of it as more of a spiritual echo. It fades, eventually, this resonance, like all echoes fade. There is no afterlife. No heaven, no hell – even though all the atoms that once made us what we were will go on milling around the universe for all eternity. Matter can neither be created nor destroyed.’
‘Do you think that these presences could have taken Timmy, too?’ asked Rob. ‘I mean – is it possible that Timmy could be stuck right here in this room, except we can’t see him because he’s still back in Wednesday afternoon, when he disappeared?’
‘I don’t know, Rob. I simply don’t know. This is the first witching room I’ve ever found myself in. As I say, I’ve read a fair amount about them. It was when I was studying to be a gleaner and I found a translation of an essay written by Nicolaus Copernicus after he studied medicine under Girolamo Fracastoro in Padua. Its title in Latin is Stat Adhuc Tempus, or Time Stands Still. Just as Copernicus theorised that the Earth goes round the Sun instead of the other way around, he suggested that certain combinations of chemicals could stop people growing old so quickly or even stop time in its tracks.
‘But, honestly, I need to find out so much more. I have no idea how these witching rooms were made, or who made them, or exactly what for. I have no idea what chemicals were mixed into the plaster or what incantation has to be spoken to suspend a person for ever in the moment when they first entered. Without being flippant, I suppose it’s a bit like those incantations to raise a specific demon, such as Asmodeus or Barbatos, or like saying “Alexa” and immediately hearing the tune you want.’
‘I can’t believe this,’ said Vicky. ‘This is completely doing my head in. But I saw those men and I heard them whispering and I saw Ada go right through that wall. We have to do something, don’t we? That’s Timmy gone and Martin gone and now Ada gone. Who’s going to be next?’
‘We’ll have to tell the police,’ said Rob. ‘After a while somebody’s going to come looking for Ada, aren’t they? Does she have family around here? Or a boyfriend?’
‘She did have a boyfriend. Bill or Will, I think his name was. But I think they split up two or three months ago and he went back to wherever he came from. Australia, as far as I remember. And I think she has a brother in Plymouth.’
‘Well, let’s look around the house first. If she disappeared into one wall, maybe she’s reappeared out of another. Or maybe there’s some trace of where those men have taken her.’
They looked around the room one more time. Rob went across to the window and blew on the match, which was still burning. He blew again, harder, but it didn’t even flicker. Francis picked it up and took it out of the room with them, and once they were back in the bedroom he nipped it out between finger and thumb.
‘Stat adhuc tempus,’ he said, ‘but nihil durat in aeternum. Time may stand still, but nothing lasts forever.’
*
They found Katharine in the kitchen. She was sitting at the table staring into space. She had a mug of tea cupped between her hands, which she had obviously forgotten about because the teabag was still floating in it and it had steeped to the colour of mahogany.
She looked up when Rob and Vicky and Francis came in.
‘Has something happened? I thought I heard that Ada shouting.’ She paused, and blinked, and then she said, ‘Is Ada not with you? Has she gone?’
Vicky pulled out a chair and sat down beside her. ‘Ada’s been – well, there’s only one way of putting it. There were men in that room. It looked as if there were four of them. But they were like ghosts.’
‘Ghosts? Are you serious?’
‘Ada threw some of this special powder in the air and it fell on them and we could see them. But then they grabbed hold of her and they—’ Vicky stopped. She couldn’t bring herself to say it.
‘They what? They what?’
‘They pulled her into the wall and she vanished,’ said Francis, in his throaty voice.
Katharine looked at him with her eyes narrowed as if he were totally deranged.
‘Is this a joke?’
‘I know it sounds absurd, but that’s what happened. It’s that room. It has what you could call a particular charisma. If you enter it and certain words are spoken, you become trapped in time. You don’t die, but you disappear, because you’re no longer in the same time as all the rest of us. The train pulls away but you’re left behind on the platform, so to speak.’
Katharine turned to Vicky.
‘Do you believe this?’
Vicky nodded. ‘Yes, Katharine, I do. Francis is going to do some more research into it, but at the moment we can’t think of any other explanation. We all saw those men, and when Rob and Francis tried to stop them pulling Ada away, they knocked both of them down onto the floor. And we all saw poor Ada disappear into that wall. One second she was there, the next she was gone.’
Katharine
