The Secret of Crickley Hall

'But—but they're not saying anything.'

'They don't have to speak to converse with me. Trust me, Eve. Cameron is in a better place where nothing can hurt him, not even your own grief. He hasn't forgotten you, though, nor his father and his sisters. He knows you'll all be together again some day.'

Gabe slipped his arm round Eve's shoulders and she pressed into him, comforted by his presence and Lili's words.

The ghosts of Nancy and Stefan had reached the stairs when the ghosts above them began to weaken, fading so that the wall and smashed window behind them could be plainly seen. They evanesced to swirling vapour, shimmering when they shrank to tiny balls of light, each one bright, each one incredibly lambent, as if with joy.

They glided down the stairs and circled the teacher and the boy, spinning faster and faster, creating flight-trails of white mist that soon enveloped Nancy and Stefan, who laughed silently with the thrill of it. Their images grew paler, then dwindled, the two apparitions condensing like the others to become small dancing orbs of brilliant gold. The little balls of light mingled, spun around each other, flying high, then low, swooping and skimming around the grand hall, touching its ceiling, glancing off the walls, weaving elaborate, effortless patterns of dazzling sunlight.

Gabe was dizzy just watching them. It was wondrous, a spectacle of breathtaking luminance that elevated his emotions so that he began to grin, then to chuckle, then to laugh. And his companions were smiling, then laughing at the light show too.

One ball of light led the way to dive at Gabe, Eve, Lili and Percy, the others following almost in formation, sweeping between them, circling round and round, pulsating with energy, colours changing to the higher spectrum of a rainbow, so that Eve and Lili cried out in delight while Gabe and Percy laughed with the sheer pleasure of it. One round light settled on the old gardener's cheek and when he touched a hand to it, it flew out from beneath his fingers to land on the opposite cheek; but it was soon gone, rejoining the others in their display, and Percy's hand lingered on the side of his face as fingertips might touch a dampness left by a kiss.

Eve sensed the misery of the past year lifting for, although she would still mourn her son, she knew now for certain that life always continued, but in another form, perhaps even in more than one. At last she embraced happiness again, at last she realized Cameron was not truly gone but was waiting for her in another place.

Suddenly, as if on command, the whirling lights flew high into the air and gathered together in one blazing whole. There the dazzling mass hovered for a moment, then swooped through the glassless window into the bright day where it outshone even the sun. Then it was gone, vanishing rather than flying away.

Gabe was the first to recover. He studied his wife's upturned face and took heart at the joy he saw there. Her eyes shone with unshed tears and her smile was almost rapturous. With Lili and Percy, she continued to gaze out into the daylight as if expecting the lights to return.

At last, Lili said: 'It really is over now.' Her smile had become wistful.

Gabe turned Eve so that she faced him in his arms. He looked over her shoulder at the psychic. 'It's resolved?' he asked Lili. 'They've left this place for good?'

Lili nodded. 'They're complete: there's nothing to keep them tied to Crickley Hall. Augustus Cribben has no power over them any more.'

'And Augustus Cribben himself? Has he gone?'

Her smile faltered. 'I don't know, but I don't feel anything here. After all, he got his eleventh victim.'

'Pyke?'

She nodded again. 'Maurice Stafford. I sense the house is empty for now, although Cribben might not have understood it's time to pass over. His bitterness could still keep him here in spirit, the lesson unlearned, his own evil clouding everything.'

'Then let's leave,' said Gabe firmly. 'Haunted or not, the sooner we're out of Crickley Hall, the better I'll like it. You okay, Percy?'

The gardener wiped a tear from his eye with the knuckle of a finger. 'I am, son,' he replied. 'It's like the young lady says, there's nothing here any more. It's just a big old ugly empty house an' I hope it stays that way fer a long time to come.'

A sound of barking outside distracted them all.

'Gabe…?' Eve looked up into her husband's face. 'That sounds like—no, it can't be.'

Gabe ginned as Chester appeared at the open door, Loren and Cally giggling behind him. The dog waited on the threshold for a second or two, as if uncertain. But as soon as he spotted Eve, he bounded and scooted through puddles towards her. As Chester slavered all over Eve, who had made the mistake of kneeling down to his level, Gabe caught Percy's eye.

Percy gave a reassuring nod of his head. There was nothing here to frighten Chester any more.

EPILOGUES

It was nurse Iris who found Magda Cribben's stone-cold corpse the morning after the big flood had hit the coastal village of Hollow Bay. Although such morning discoveries were not infrequent in a nursing home for the elderly, the nurse had to suppress a scream of fright when she walked into Magda's cell-like bedroom, for instead of lying peacefully in her bed, the old woman was sitting upright and fully dressed on her hard chair, facing the door, her body already stiff as if she had frozen there.

But it was the expression on Magda Cribben's face that upset Iris so: Magda's jaw was dropped, her toothless mouth open wide as if in a rictal cry of horror, and her lifeless eyes remained staring at the doorway—staring past Nurse Iris—as if her last sight was of something horrific entering the room.

•

They never recovered the body of Gordon Pyke, the man who had visited Crickley Hall on the night of what the locals called the Second Great Flood. They assumed that his drowned body had been carried by the underground river out to the sea and then to the ocean beyond. Either that, or it was still trapped somewhere in the underground river, snagged by rocks or washed into some subterranean cavern. After all, two bodies that had been lost since the last world war had only recently been found.

No one knew much about Pyke, so no one cared very much that his body was lost. To the older villagers, he was just another victim of Crickley Hall's curse.

•

Crickley Hall has remained empty for a year now. Potential buyers or those looking to rent are not attracted to the place. Its architecture is too severe, its ambience too depressing, they say. Some even compare it to a mausoleum despite (or maybe even because of) its grand hall.

Even the estate manager hates his monthly check on the property's condition. It's creepy, he likes to tell anyone who is not a possible client. Sometimes he hears noises, he claims. Oh, he knows that most are the usual sounds of trespassing rodents, birds in the chimneys or merely the house settling, but sometimes they are different from all those. Always faint. Always from rooms that are empty when he looks into them. But they are distinct.

They sound like:

Swish-thwack!

Swish-thwack!

Swish-thwack!

• • •

JAMES HERBERT is not just Britain's No. 1 bestselling writer of chiller fiction, a position he has held since the publication of his first novel, but he is one of our greatest popular novelists, whose books are sold in thirty-five other languages, including Russian and Chinese. Widely imitated and hugely influential, his twenty novels have sold more than fifty million copies worldwide.