Lockwood & Co.: The Screaming Staircase

eyes swivelled round to George and me. ‘Perhaps none of you do.’
    ‘No, no. We do,’ I said. ‘We believe every word. Don’t we, George?’
    ‘Almost all of them.’
    Bert Starkins scowled. ‘You’ll discover very shortly whether or not what I say is true. In any case, there’s no ghost in that cottage because that’s where I live. I keep it clean of Visitors.’ Even from a distance the iron defences dangling from the tiled roof were clear.
    The old man said no more. He stalked onwards, roundedthe final corner and led us back to the front of the house, where we discovered our duffel bags had been moved to the top of the entrance steps, and a tall, emaciated figure stood at the open doors, waving his iron-handled walking stick in greeting.

19

    ‘Welcome, Mr Lockwood, welcome!’ John William Fairfax ushered us over the threshold, shaking Lockwood’s hand, nodding curtly to George and me. He seemed even taller and thinner and more mantis-like than I remembered; the cloth of his dark-grey suit hung off his wasted limbs in empty folds. ‘Right on time, exactly as you promised. And you will find that I have kept my promise too. I wired the money to your bank account ten minutes ago, Mr Lockwood, so your company’s future is assured. Congratulations! If you will accompany me now to my apartments in the East Wing, you may telephone your bank manager, as we discussed. Mr Cubbins, Miss Carlyle – yonder in the Long Gallery you will find refreshments laid out by the fire.No, don’t bother with your bags! Starkins will see to them.’
    He continued talking loudly as he walked away, his stick tapping on the flagstoned floor. Lockwood went with him; George lingered a moment, stamping his boots clean on the entrance mat. Me, I lingered too, but not to clean my boots. For the first time since I was a tiny kid, and Jacobs had forced me inside a haunted farmhouse with a stick, I disobeyed the first, most crucial rule.
    I hung back at the doorway, hesitant and afraid.
    The lobby of the Hall was a great square chamber with a vaulted wooden ceiling and plainly whitewashed walls. George’s floor-plans had told us it was a relic of the original priory, and in its scale and simplicity it was still very much like a church. Up on the ceiling, where ancient cross-beams met, small carved figures gazed inscrutably down, winged and robed, their faces worn away by the years. The walls were hung with oil paintings, mostly portraits of lords and ladies from long ago.
    On either side of the lobby, recessed arches led to other rooms. Directly opposite me, however, a much larger arch rose almost as high as the ceiling, and beyond that arch . . .
    Beyond that arch was a staircase. The steps were broad and made of stone. Time and the feet of centuries had worn them thin at the centre, smoothed them sheer as marble. On either side, stone balustrades swept up towards a quarter-landing,beneath a circular glass window. Through this the final rays of sunlight gleamed, splashing the stairs with red.
    I looked at that staircase, and I couldn’t move. I looked at it and listened .
    Beside me, George stamped his great fat feet. Old Starkins hefted the first duffel bag, wheezing and gasping as he thumped it down in the lobby. Footmen walked by, carrying trays of cups, cakes and clinking cutlery. I heard Lockwood laugh as he passed into another room.
    There was plenty of noise around, in other words. But when I listened, it was something else I heard. A silence. The deeper silence of the house. I sensed it all around me, sentient and aware. That silence stretched away from me, along the corridors and levels, up that great stone flight of stairs, through open doors and under lonely windows, on and on, to an ever more frightening distance. There wasn’t any end to it. The house was just the gate. The silence continued for ever. And it was waiting for us – I could feel it waiting. I had the impression of something towering over me, massive and cliff-like, ready to crash down on my head.
    George finished stamping his boots; he set off in pursuit of the footmen and their cakes. Starkins wrestled with the luggage. The others were gone.
    I looked over my shoulder at the gravel driveway and the park beyond. Light drained across the winter countryside. Out in the fields, furrows filled with shadow; soon they’dbrim over and flood the land with spreading dark, and the silence in the house would stir . . .
    Panic gripped my chest. I didn’t have