The nine visions were perfectly still and perfectly silent. They continued to stare.
Gabe made to take a step forward, but Eve kept her grip on his arm, holding him there. He regarded her quizzically, but her eyes were on the children and her half-smile puzzled him.
'Eve…?' he ventured.
'Wait, Gabe,' she responded softly without taking her attention off the children. 'Wait and see.' She knew something was about to happen.
Lili closed her eyes and she was smiling too. 'The children have come for them,' she said breathlessly.
Percy suddenly felt weak, as if his energy were draining away. He staggered slightly, but steadied himself through sheer force of will.
The oldest girl, the one Eve thought must be Susan Trainer, shifted her gaze from the four people to the open cellar doorway. The battered door hung by one hinge against the wall.
Lili spun round when the rest of the children looked across the hall at the dark open doorway, and she stared at it too. Her hand went to her throat as she waited.
Gabe heard the noise on the cellar steps, footfalls that were distinct over the low background rush of the river that ran beneath the house. He glanced at Eve when the grip on his arm tightened and he saw that her eyes were shining from some inner joy, while he felt nothing but apprehension. Surely nothing more could happen? He felt what was now a familiar cold prickling sensation at the back of his neck.
The footsteps grew louder. Something moved in the shadow of the cellar doorway.
'It's all right,' he heard Lili say softly and he wasn't sure who she was addressing.
They emerged from the cellar together, the young woman leading the boy by the hand.
The group of people watched in awe and stunned silence. Percy gave a little moan, a kind of whimper. Eve pressed even closer to Gabe. Lili held both hands up to her cheeks.
'Nancy…' the old gardener said under his breath.
She wasn't very tall, but her form was slim, compact. Her hair hung in shiny copper ringlets round her pale pretty face. Her clothes were no longer bedraggled, her long skirt no longer faded; the buckles on her shoes now shone with reflected light, and dark stockings covered her ankles. She still wore the woollen shawl round her shoulders, but her right hand and arm were no longer withered and twisted but smooth and as pallid as the rest of her skin. She was smiling and the fine shallow mist of her aura was luminous in its radiance.
She held the boy's hand in her own once-deformed hand, and he came shyly into the hall with her, his wide dark eyes looking about him, taking in the room and its puddle flagstone floor, flitting over the watching people so that they knew he was aware of their presence. The colour in his hair had returned and it fell darkly over his smooth forehead. Stefan and the young teacher moved across the hall and, although their hollow footsteps could be heard, the shallow pools of water they walked through went undisturbed.
Gabe felt Percy brush by him as if the old man wanted—needed—to confront the ghost of his lost sweetheart, but it was Lili who held him back.
'It's Nancy—' he began to say, but Lili gently stayed his words.
'You can't communicate with her, Percy,' she told him. 'Please don't interfere with what's happening.'
He looked uncertainly at the psychic, then back at the two figures crossing the hall. His shoulders relaxed and his eyes softened moistly. 'She's so… she looks so…' he tried to say. 'Nancy looks so lovely, as she always did.'
Lili turned to Eve, who appeared absorbed by the phantom boy. The psychic sensed Eve's thoughts.
'Your little boy has passed on, Eve,' she said quietly but firmly. 'Cam isn't in our world any more, not even in spirit, like these children.'
Eve seemed dismayed. 'How do you know?' It was almost a protest.
'Because they're telling me so.' Lili indicated the spirit children on the stairs.
'But—but they're not saying anything.'
'They don't have to speak to converse with me. Trust me, Eve. Cameron is in a better place where nothing can hurt him, not even your own grief. He hasn't forgotten you, though, nor his father and his sisters. He knows you'll all be together again some day.'
Gabe slipped his arm round Eve's shoulders and she pressed into him, comforted by his presence and Lili's words.
The ghosts of Nancy and Stefan had reached the stairs when the ghosts above them began to weaken, fading so that the wall and smashed window behind them could be plainly seen. They evanesced to swirling vapour, shimmering when they shrank to tiny balls of light, each one bright, each one incredibly lambent, as if with joy.
They glided down the stairs and circled the teacher and the boy, spinning faster and faster, creating flight-trails of white mist that soon enveloped Nancy and Stefan, who laughed silently with the thrill of it. Their images grew paler, then dwindled, the two apparitions condensing like the others to become small dancing orbs of brilliant gold. The little balls of light mingled, spun around each other, flying high, then low, swooping and skimming around the grand hall, touching its ceiling, glancing off the walls, weaving elaborate, effortless patterns of dazzling sunlight.
Gabe was dizzy just watching them. It was wondrous, a spectacle of breathtaking luminance that elevated his emotions so that he began to grin, then to chuckle, then to laugh. And his companions were smiling, then laughing at the light show too.
One ball of light led the way to dive at Gabe, Eve, Lili and Percy, the others following almost in formation, sweeping between them, circling round and round, pulsating with energy, colours changing to the higher spectrum of a rainbow, so that Eve and Lili cried out in delight while Gabe and Percy laughed with the sheer pleasure of it. One round light settled on the old gardener's cheek and when he touched a hand to it, it flew out from beneath his fingers to land on the opposite cheek; but it was soon gone, rejoining the others in their display, and Percy's hand lingered on the side of his face as fingertips might touch a dampness left by a kiss.
Eve sensed the misery of the past year lifting for, although she would still mourn her son, she knew now for certain that life always continued, but in another form, perhaps even in more than one. At last she embraced happiness again, at last she realized Cameron was not truly gone but was waiting for her in another place.
Suddenly, as if on command, the whirling lights flew high into the air and gathered together in one blazing whole. There the dazzling mass hovered for a moment, then swooped through the glassless window into the bright day where it outshone even the sun. Then it was gone, vanishing rather than flying away.
Gabe was the first to recover. He studied his wife's upturned face and took heart at the joy he saw there. Her eyes shone with unshed tears and her smile was almost rapturous. With Lili and Percy, she continued to gaze out into the daylight as if expecting the lights to return.
At last, Lili said: 'It really is over now.' Her smile had become wistful.
Gabe turned Eve so that she faced him in his arms. He looked over her shoulder at the psychic. 'It's resolved?' he asked Lili. 'They've left this place for good?'
Lili nodded. 'They're complete: there's nothing to keep them tied to Crickley Hall. Augustus Cribben has no power over them any more.'
'And Augustus Cribben himself? Has he gone?'
Her smile faltered. 'I don't know, but I don't feel anything here. After all, he got his eleventh victim.'
'Pyke?'
She nodded again. 'Maurice Stafford. I sense the house is empty for now, although Cribben might not have understood it's time to pass over. His bitterness could still keep him here in spirit, the lesson unlearned, his own evil clouding everything.'