Barbara Erskine - Hiding From the Light

‘You’re photographers?’ Emma waggled her foot experimentally.

‘Film. TV.’ Mark turned to his briefcase and pulled out a pack of Kleenex. He proffered it hopefully. ‘Will this help clean you up? Or there’s a loo upstairs.’

‘Actually I might go up and wash my hands.’ She pulled herself to her feet with a wince.

‘Straight up. You can’t miss it.’ He grinned. It was his lucky day. A beautiful woman, literally, falling at his feet!

Glancing into the upper room from the landing at the top of the stairs she saw that it was large and empty, the windows leaded and dusty. A bluebottle was beating against one of the panes and on the floor below the sill she could see the bodies of several others. She shivered. In spite of the frenzied buzzing of the fly there was a strange stillness in the room which was unnerving.

She found the cloakroom, cleaned off most of the dust, washed her hands and was making her way back towards the empty room when she heard someone walking across the floor towards the staircase. She paused in the doorway, looking round. ‘Mark?’

There was no answer. ‘Mark, are you there?’ The room was empty. The bluebottle was lying on its back on the window sill, spinning feebly in circles. She stepped cautiously into the room. ‘Hello? Is there anyone here?’

The silence was intense, as though someone was holding their breath, listening.

‘Mark? Colin?’ She stared round nervously. ‘Who is it? Who’s there?’

There was no answer.

Retreating to the top of the stairs she glanced back towards the window and caught her breath in surprise. There was someone there, surely. A stooped figure, staring at her across the pile of boxes in the middle of the floor.

Welcome back .

The words seemed to hang in the air.

For a moment she couldn’t move, her eyes locked onto the pale, indistinct face, then a child shouted suddenly in the street below and the moment was over. The figure was gone – a mere trick of the light – the room was empty.

She felt a knot of fear tightening in her chest. Sternly she dismissed it. Hurrying downstairs she limped towards her chair and flung herself down in it, shaken. ‘You weren’t upstairs just now, were you?’

Mark glanced up from the notebook he was writing in. ‘No. Why?’

She shrugged. ‘I thought I heard someone up there.’ Cautiously she began to rub her ankle.

He scrutinised her face for a moment. ‘Really?’

She nodded. ‘It was a bit spooky, to be honest!’ She gave a small apologetic laugh. ‘It was probably my imagination. Did you say you were making a film here?’

Mark nodded. ‘A documentary.’

‘And what is so special about this place? I mean, I can see it’s very old and attractive, but presumably that’s not enough to warrant a film?’

Mark shook his head. ‘No. Well, as I think you might have guessed, it’s part of a series on haunted buildings.’ He gave a wry laugh. ‘You weren’t thinking of buying it, were you?’ He nodded towards the keys lying next to her bag. The estate agent’s tag was large and obvious.

She shivered ostentatiously. ‘Good Lord, no. I was on my way to see a country cottage.’ She frowned uncertainly. ‘Perhaps I’m going mad, but I think I might have seen your ghost up there. A figure, by the window. Does that sound likely?’

Mark stared. ‘It’s possible. What did it look like?’

‘Sort of wan and transparent!’

He grinned. ‘Sounds fairly authentic. I’m jealous. I haven’t seen a thing yet.’

‘It could have been a trick of the light.’

‘True.’ He was watching her closely.

She raised an eyebrow. ‘So, who is this ghost?’ And quite suddenly she didn’t want to know. She quite desperately didn’t want to know. But it was too late. Mark was launching into his story.

‘OK, I’ll tell you the full sordid tale. This shop is so haunted it has been owned or leased by about a dozen different businesses in the last few years. No one stays long and now its reputation goes before it so it’s been on the market for three years.’

‘And you’re going to film the ghost?’ Without realising it Emma had wrapped her arms around herself tightly. She glanced up at the ceiling.

‘That’s the general idea. We heard about it in a roundabout way through one of our scouts who had worked on House Detectives just up the road, and after a bit of research we felt it would fit our series really well. Ah, Colin, sustenance!’

The Welshman had appeared in the doorway with a tray. On it were three large cups of coffee and a plate of cakes. He slid the tray onto the counter. ‘If this project takes more than a day or two I’m going to want danger money for cake overload.’ He passed Emma the plate. ‘Please take the chocolate one because if you don’t I will and I mustn’t.’ He patted his stomach ruefully.

Laughing uneasily, Emma helped herself to a large sticky slice. ‘Anything to oblige.’ She glanced round the room. The atmosphere was better now. Normal. ‘Have you seen it, Colin?’

‘It?’

‘The ghost.’

‘Ah,’ Colin glanced at Mark. ‘No, not yet. And I’d be grateful if you didn’t spread it around why we’re here. We’ve told the café people we’re surveyors. Which I suppose, if one were being a little bit disingenuous, one could say was true. They know the story of course, and they’ll find out in the end why we’re here, but I don’t want every bored kid in town tapping on the windows and wailing at the locks the moment it gets dark if I can help it.’

‘Have you filmed ghosts before?’ In spite of the distraction of the chocolate cake, she couldn’t stop herself thinking about the silent upstairs room with its shadowy occupant.

‘Yup.’ Mark took a bite of coffee and walnut. ‘With mixed results and open to all sorts of questions but Col and I were pretty convinced we’d caught something. The last one was up in Lincolnshire.’

‘This is a difficult one.’ Colin sat down in the other chair. ‘The story involves this whole town. It’s a very emotive subject. This place is supposed to be haunted by several ghosts, amongst them a guy called Matthew Hopkins. He was Oliver Cromwell’s Witch-finder General. One of those all-time villains of history. You must have heard of him? There was a film about him.’

‘A bit before her time!’ Mark grinned. ‘It was a Michael Reeves film. 1968. Our hero was played by Vincent Price, who was fifty-seven years old at the time, although Matthew actually seems to have died before he was twenty-five.’ He sucked his breath in through his teeth. ‘Well, we all know about historical veracity in films. Perhaps we can do something to put some facts in place. There is enough horror in the truth here, from what I gather.’

‘I do remember the film.’ Emma frowned. She was feeling uncomfortable again, ever more aware of that upstairs room. ‘I must have seen it on TV. I don’t know if that was based on fact, but weren’t hundreds of poor old women burned at the stake?’ She shuddered.

‘Ah, well, no.’ Mark squatted down on the floor beside one of the bags and drew out a file of papers. ‘I’m still researching, but it seems that they weren’t burnt at all. They were hanged. And there weren’t hundreds of them. More like dozens.’

‘Mark is getting all evangelical about this one,’ Colin grinned, almost indulgently. ‘But that is good. We have to get the facts right. Then whatever story there is here will be all the stronger. Hopkins is supposed to have tortured some of his victims in this building – this shop was part of a much larger house originally. It belonged to the Phillips family and Mary Phillips, who worked with Matthew Hopkins, lived here at some point. She was a really nasty piece of work. She pricked the witches with a vicious spike to find the Devil’s mark.’