There is an old, empty house in Devil's Cleave, a deep gorge that leads from the high moors down to the harbour village of Hollow Bay.
The house is Crickley Hall and it's large and grim, somehow foreboding. It's rumoured to be haunted. It's thought to hold a secret.
Despite some reservations, the Caleighs move in, searching for respite in this beautiful part of North Devon, seeking peace and perhaps to come to terms with what's happened to them as a family. But all is not well with the house. They hear unaccountable noises. A cellar door they shut every night is always open again in the morning. They see things that cannot be real.
The house is the last place the Caleighs should have come to, for the terror that unfolds is beyond belief. Soon they will discover the secret horror of Crickley Hall…
'From the darkness let the innocent speak so that the guilty may know their shame.' —ANON
'The evil that men do lives after them…' —SHAKESPEARE
'Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.' —PROVERBS 22:6
THEN
They scattered into a darkness scarcely tempered by oil lamps, the soft glow easily repressed by the deep shadows of the house.
The shrieks and cries of the fleeing children rose above the noise of the storm outside. The sound of their stockinged feet was soft on the hard stone floor of the cavernous hall.
Some of them took to the stairs, scurrying past the tall, almost ceiling-high window at the turn, rain beating at its glass, the fierce wind rattling the frames, lightning flickering outside and casting darker shadows across the stone floor.
The children found refuge wherever they could—behind furniture, beneath tables, inside cupboards, anywhere they might sink into the umbra and be hidden while they prayed they would not be found. There in their hopeless sanctuaries they held their whimpers but were unable to control the chattering of their teeth and the nervous fidget of their limbs, for they knew that eventually he would find them, that he would seek them out one by one.
Silent tears drenched their cheeks and glacial fingers seemed to squeeze their small hearts.
He would snatch them from their hideaways and punish them. And this time, a cruel knowing voice whispered in their minds, this time it would be the worst punishment of all…
They heard his approach even though he wore no shoes, for he swished something through the cold damp air, each swish ending in a sudden violent thwack, the beating of cane against bare flesh. Swish, then thwack, cane on flesh, swish, then thwack, two individual sounds that could be clearly heard over the raging storm outside. Swish-thwack! Louder, swish-thwack! Louder, coming closer. Swish-thwack! Almost becoming one sound.
They tried to be very, very quiet…
NOW
1: ARRIVAL
Although the rain had ceased for the moment, single thick globules, as if too heavy to be held by the blanket cloud overhead, splattered against the windscreen like miniature water bombs, and were quickly reduced to smears by the intermittent sweep of the wipers. Eve's spirits had felt as low as the weather during the earlier part of the five-hour journey (including the break for lunch) from London, and now they dropped to an even lower level.
The big grey-stone house on the other side of the narrow rushing river looked grim, more like an ancient sanatorium or resthome for the indigent elderly than a family home.
Gabe had parked the Range Rover in a small clear area beside the lane that led a mile or so downhill to the harbour village of Hollow Bay. Despite the miserable weather, Eve had felt her heart lift a little (as much as it was capable of lifting these days) once they'd left the motorway—interstate, Gabe, her American husband, kept calling it—and reached the West Country; she had almost enjoyed travelling through sheltered lanes with close beech hedges that frequently gave way to wide sweeping moorlands of fine heather and bracken, distant woodland-clad hills their pastel backcloth, not even the dark louring skies spoiling the splendour. Rather than announce nature's retreat towards winter, the autumn colours—the reds, greens, browns, golds and yellows—of woodlands and fauna boasted their glory as the Range Rover sped through deep valleys and crossed rough-stone bridges over tumbling streams.
Gabe had promised them healthy long walks (much to the exaggerated groans of their daughters, Loren and Cally), especially along the beautiful deep-sided and tree-lined gorge—he called it a ravine and the map called it Devil's Cleave—in which their new temporary home was situated; they would either follow the river down to the sea or climb towards its source on the high moors. It would be fun. On weekends they could explore the craggy coastline, the rugged clifftops and the small sheltered bays and sandy coves. Weather permitting, they could even take out a sailing boat and ride the waves. Or maybe do some horse riding (because his homeland was the States, Gabe had convinced their youngest daughter, Cally, that he had once been a cowboy, a fib for which he would have to answer when she discovered he'd never been on a horse in his life, Eve had thought wryly). If the weather was bad, they could just explore the countryside by car.
There'd be plenty to keep them occupied on weekends, he had assured them. And it might help the healing, he told Eve when they were alone.
Now they were here and this was her first sight of Crickley Hall, which was not quite large enough to be called a manor, but was much too big for a normal home. Gabe had visited twice before, the first time in summer when he'd scouted the locale for a property close to the job to which his engineering company had been sub-contracted, and a second time a week ago when he'd hired a van and, with Vern Brennan, a fellow-American buddy of his, had delivered most of the bulky items the family would need for their stay (the house itself was already furnished with old-fashioned stuff, according to Gabe, which was good enough to get by with).
Through the Range Rover's windscreen, Eve saw that a sturdy wooden bridge traversed the swift-moving, boulder-strewn Bay River, which Gabe had described as no more than a wide, gentle stream when he had returned from viewing the property a couple of months ago. But then, it had been late August; now the boisterous waters threatened to overspill the raised banks. The bridge itself was made of rough timber, the sides crosshatched with thin lengths of rustic logs beneath thick rails; while it appeared strong, the structure was not wide enough to accept the Range Rover—nor any other largish vehicle—hence the parking bay on this side of the river.
On the opposite bank, the house—or Hall, as it was called—occupied a level expanse of cut grass and shrubbery with the odd tree here and there (one tree near the front had a child's swing dangling from a stout branch). The far thickly foliaged side of the gorge loomed impressively steep, high over the stark building.
'It looks a bit grim,' she found herself saying, immediately regretting the criticism; Gabe had tried so hard.
Her husband looked across at her from the driver's seat, his wide tight-lipped smile concealing any disappointment.
'Guess it looked a little different in summer,' he said.
'No, the weather doesn't help.' She touched his hand on the steering wheel and made herself return the smile. His wonderfully blue eyes, darkened by the gloom of the car's interior, examined her own for reassurance.