Wylding Hall

Chapter 7

Nancy

Suddenly, I heard this uncanny singing. To this day, I can’t explain what it was. Less like singing than birdsong: quite high-pitched, almost piercing, then a series of trills, and that high keening again. Then a fluttering sound right above me, like something was trapped in the rafters.

I knew we weren’t supposed to open our eyes, but I couldn’t help it. When I heard that rustling noise, my eyes popped right open. I almost bolted. I thought it was rats scurrying around, which wouldn’t have surprised me a bit. There were all sorts of things living in the walls there. Rats and mice and god knows what.

So there I am, staring at the ceiling — and that’s when I realize it can’t possibly be rats. Whatever it is, it’s above me. The rehearsal room had very high ceilings, which should have made for a bad acoustic, but didn’t. It sounded like a bird had got in and was bashing itself against the beams up there, trying to get out.

I started to sit up, but I felt Julian’s hand on my arm, holding me back. He didn’t say anything, not out loud, but I knew he was telling me to stay beside him and look at the ceiling. Like he was a transmitter and I was picking up the frequency he was on.

I looked up, but I couldn’t see anything. It was pitch dark, darker even than it had seemed when my eyes were shut. The bird kept flying back and forth; I could hear it strike the beams and the ceiling. A hollow thump, over and over again.

There was something horrible about it. The fact that it just kept bashing itself against the beams and wouldn’t stop: it was killing itself, trying to get out. And if it did fall, it would fall on me, and that would be even more horrible.

Even with Julian trying to hold me back, I knew I had to get away. I tried to sit up, but it was like when I’d first arrived. I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe. And all the while that bird is thrashing about, and Julian beside me is breathing faster and faster — it was almost like he was getting off on it.

At some point, the bird stopped flying. It must have found its way out, because I didn’t hear it fall. That was when the singing began again, the same eerie song I’d heard before.

Only now Julian sang along with it, so softly that I couldn’t hear any words. I have no idea if he was just chanting, or if he was trying to make contact with something — if he’d entered some sort of liminal state. You know, in-between: here and not-here. It’s what I do for a living, but I’ve trained myself over the decades. And I’m always very careful, because it can be extremely dangerous.

With Julian, I think he was like a kid playing with electricity. Fiddling with the wireless, touching the electric fence to get a little shock. Without knowing it, he grabbed a live wire, and—pffft. Maybe that’s how the bird found its way out. It wasn’t until long after that it struck me: maybe it wasn’t trying to find a way out at all. Maybe it was trying to find a way in.