The Changeling by Jenkins Robin

Author:Jenkins, Robin [Jenkins, Robin]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Romance
ISBN: 9781847674630
Publisher: Canongate Books
Published: 2008-09-23T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

In the evening they stepped off the bus not far from the great derelict house. As soon as they entered the avenue Chick took from his pocket an apostle teaspoon and held it in his hand. Avenue and garden were a wilderness of willowherb, tall and red and aggressive, like gigantic cocks. Behind the house the hillside rose sheer, bristling with dark-leaved trees. The house itself was already in shadow, though sunshine still blazed on the Firth. It was so huge and so imposing on its eminence over the sea, that its glassless windows, its shattered roof, its dangling rone-pipes, and above all its open doors, made it look like an enormous sinister trap. Tables and striped deckchairs ought to have been on the lawn in front; shiny motor-cars on the carriage-way; rich people gazing out of the windows; and servants everywhere. Instead there was nobody but themselves, as they crept about reconnoitring. Chick tapped the walls with his spoon; it was like a kind of tuning-fork to which he listened as if to a warning. To Peerie he became the most uncanny thing in or out of the house. Peerie himself kept close to Tom; he would have held on to him if he had been allowed.

Upstairs they found a room whose ceiling was almost intact, and whose windows had some glass in them. The floor was littered with fallen plaster, withered leaves, and birds’ dung.

‘This could do,’ said Tom.

Chick was tapping his spoon against the marble fireplace.

‘Are you trying to see if there’s a secret passage, Chick?’ asked Peerie.

Chick turned and tapped his brow with the spoon.

‘I don’t like it in here,’ he muttered.

Tom’s smile now frightened Peerie as much as Chick’s tapping did.

‘I don’t like it myself, Chick,’ he whispered.

‘Why is it empty?’ cried Chick. ‘Why did they go away and leave it?’

‘If you meet them tonight ask them,’ said Tom, but in such a low voice that only Peerie heard.

‘Listen,’ said Chick.

Outside on the road a car passed. In the garden a bird chirped. Transformed by Chick’s listening, those sounds became strange and evil, from the world of ghosts. The terror was too much for Chick himself. He crouched down on the hearth, buried his head in his arms, and made noises of fear like an animal.

Peerie bravely went over to comfort him.

‘There’s nothing to be frightened aboot, Chick,’ he said. ‘It’s just an empty hoose. The folk went away. Folk go away, Chick. Mind old Mr Camm went away and naebody knew where he went to?’ Peerie groaned, having in his agitation of pity conjured up his own private nightmare: Mr Camm’s body had been dragged out of the Clyde months later. ‘Tom’s no’ frightened,’ he added.

But when he turned to look at Tom for reassurance he was again daunted by that smile, itself suggesting things which could not be seen.

‘Chick’s never been as bad as this before, Tom,’ he said. ‘It must be this hoose. Do you think it is haunted?’

‘It’s just haunted if you think it’s haunted.

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