Sarah Rayne: What Lies Beneath

‘He’s coming down the passageway,’ whispered Ella, urgently.

They waited in terrified silence, their hearts pounding, hardly daring to breathe. The footsteps paused at each door and then moved on. Ella stared at the dull surface of the closed door, willing the man to walk past it, to decide it would just be another empty room. But empty rooms had things in them, things that must never be seen…

Next to her, Veronica was trembling and Ella put an arm round her. As she did so, a faint sound came to them from the village, and fear swept over her again. It was St Anselm’s clock chiming the quarter-hour. There were only fifteen minutes left before the plane came with its dreadful cargo. What would happen if they were still here then? Was Clem’s father right, and did the plane really have all that stuff that could give people dreadful diseases? The notice board had said it was called Geranos. If they breathed in the Geranos would they die? If they ran out now they would have plenty of time to scramble over the wall of Cadence Manor and be up the hillside and far enough away to be safe. But they could not run out because of the man. Perhaps he might not mean them any harm: he might be trying to find them to warn them to run out before the plane flew over. But then why hadn’t he simply called out?

He was outside the door now – the handle was being turned. The door swung inwards and he was there, staring into the room, and of course he was not here to warn them at all. His eyes glared with madness, and a smile – a truly dreadful smile – widened his face. Ella pressed down into the tiny corner, but he knew where she was, of course – he knew where they all were. There was a movement over her head, and when she looked up, the nightmare face was looking over the top of the broken brickwork. The smile came again, and one hand reached down.

Veronica let out a scared whimper and tried to cower back, but Ella was suddenly angry. A fierce burning anger scalded through her entire body and made her feel ten feet high and as strong as a giant. She sprang up and flew at the man, pushing him as hard as she could, screaming at him to leave them alone. His eyes widened with shock and, caught off balance, he stumbled back, missing his footing and half falling against the bricks of the collapsed chimney breast. The anger gave way to triumph and Ella ran straight at him, her hands clenched into fists, shouting to Veronica and Clem to help her, yelling that they had only ten minutes left to get out.

Veronica hung back, but Clem, his eyes huge with panic and excitement, ran from behind the bookcase and kicked the man, sending him slithering a little way across the floor.

‘Harder!’ shouted Ella, and Veronica came out from the hiding place.

This time, in the panic and confusion, one of them must have kicked a bit harder because the man rolled all the way across the floor to where the floorboards had collapsed over the old hearth, right onto the edge of the black jagged hole. He made a scrabbling movement at the ground with his hands to stop himself from toppling into the yawning blackness. Ella heard Clem and Veronica both gasp in horror and she thought Clem started forward as if to help the man. But the anger was still filling Ella up, and before either Clem or Veronica could do anything, she bent down and pushed the man as hard as she could. With a dreadful kind of grunting scream, he fell down, down into the bad-smelling blackness of the chimney shaft. There was a whoosh of sound as he fell, and clouds of soot and dust and fragments of bird skeletons flew upwards. Ella and the other two flinched, coughing and gasping, then Clem scrambled to the edge of the hole and peered down.

‘Can you see him?’ said Veronica, fearfully.

‘Um, yes, I think so. He’s lying all sort of broken,’ said Clem. ‘He’s right at the bottom.’ When he looked back at them his face was white and he seemed as if he might be about to be sick.

‘We’d better go down to see,’ said Ella.

‘We haven’t got time,’ said Clem, sounding frightened. ‘It’s nearly twelve o’clock.’

‘We’ll run for all we’re worth,’ said Ella. ‘But we need to know if he’s dead.’

They ran down the stairs, their footsteps echoing loudly in the empty old house, leaving prints behind them.

‘Which is the room underneath?’ gasped Clem.

‘In here.’

‘How do you know? Mightn’t it be that one?’

‘No,’ said Ella quickly. ‘No, it’s this one, I’m sure.’ Before Clem could argue she pushed open a door on the ground floor and peered in. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s the room.’

‘Is he there?’

‘Yes. The chimney’s half fallen away – there’re bricks all over the floor, but I can see him. He’s sort of wedged inside it like Clem said.’

‘Is he really dead?’ asked Veronica.

‘I think so. But we ought to make sure.’

‘I’m not going to,’ said Veronica at once. ‘I’ve never seen a dead person.’

‘I have,’ said Clem. ‘I saw my grandmother. I went to say goodbye to her in the funeral place.’

‘We know you did, you went on about it for ages afterwards.’

‘Well, she looked like he looks now,’ said Clem, peering warily into the room. ‘People die with their eyes open and you have to close them or they go on staring at nothing for ever.’

‘Shut up about dead people,’ said Ella on a sob, and Clem looked at her curiously.

But he only said, ‘I think he’s dead, but we ought to get somebody to make sure. A doctor or something.’

‘There’s no time,’ began Ella, then stopped, because from outside the old manor house, on the hillside above them, came the sound of St Anselm’s clock, this time chiming twelve. The sounds were slow and measured, pealing out into the deserted village street. But through the chimes came another sound – a faint, far-off growl. For a moment none of them realized what it was. Then in a voice of horrified fear, Clem said, ‘It’s the plane. It’s exactly on time.’

The plane that carried a sinister cargo – a cargo that might poison and even kill every living thing in Priors Bramley – was coming towards them.

The three of them ran for all they were worth, scrambling out of Cadence Manor, and going full pelt towards the wall enclosing the grounds. The plane was approaching; they could hear the purr of its engine, building to a menacing growl as it came closer. Once Veronica clapped her hands over her ears, but Ella snatched her hands away because they needed all their energy to run.

‘There’s the wall,’ gasped Clem. ‘We can get to it in time—’

‘We can’t,’ cried Veronica. ‘And what if there’s barbed wire?’

‘There won’t be,’ said Ella. ‘And once we’re over the wall it’ll be all right – come on , Veronica!’

Afterwards, they did not remember how they had managed to climb the wall and drop down onto the grass on the other side.

‘No barbed wire,’ gasped Clem, as they ran towards the stile. ‘They’d think the wall was enough.’

‘Never mind the wall, hurry up!’

Later, Ella found her hands and knees were bloodied and torn, but at the time there was only the frantic need to get away. They got to the stile, and scrambled over it, then ran all the way up the hillside to Mordwich Meadow, flinging themselves down on the grass, sobbing for breath, but with their eyes turned up to the sky.

The plane was almost directly over the village now, and as they watched, it began to circle. ‘It’s an Auster,’ said Clem, awed. ‘My uncle told me it would be – he was in the RAF in the war. They use that kind of plane for observation – mapping battlefields and things like that. It’s got high wings so the pilot can see straight down to the ground.’