Gabe had just felt the emptiness of that doorway when the imperfect moon fought clear of the roiling clouds below it and suddenly they could see more clearly. Moonlight flooded through the hall's tall window, brightening a long segment of the flagstone floor, and Eve was able to discern her husband's silhouette in the opening.
'It's all right, Cally,' she heard him say. 'We're here, you're okay, baby.'
Eve pushed into the room behind him, dragging a terrified Loren in her wake. Cally was kneeling on her bed, the duvet bunched up before her.
'Cally, what is it?' Eve made straight for her, arms outstretched.
Cally had stopped screaming, but her shoulders heaved with her sobbing.
'In the corner, Mummy,' she wailed, throwing herself into her mother's arms.
Eve, Gabe and Loren all looked towards the corner that Cally's trembling finger was pointing at. In the semi-darkness they could see it was empty.
'There's nothing there, darling,' Eve soothed as Cally clung to her. 'You've just had a bad dream.'
'No, Mummy, there was someone standing there, all black.'
'No, you just had a fright when the lights went out. We probably disturbed you when we were out on the landing.'
'The banging woke me up,' Cally complained as she cried against Eve's shoulder, the words coming out between sob spasms. 'I sat up and saw someone in the corner. He was—he was looking at me.'
How could she tell if whatever she had imagined watching her was all black? Eve wondered, but quickly dismissed the thought: logic wasn't going to calm Cally down.
Gabe, who had found his way over to the empty corner, turned back towards the bed. 'It was just a bad dream, Cally,' he told her softly. 'Look, there's no one there.'
'But, Daddy—'
'Hush, darling.' Eve hugged her tight. 'It's over now. We're here with you.'
'I left my flashlight beside our bed,' Gabe said. 'I wanna take a look inside that closet.'
At any other time Loren would have amended 'closet' to 'cupboard', but tonight she was too upset. 'Don't, Daddy,' she pleaded. 'Not while it's so dark.' The moon was abruptly hidden again and she sat on the bed with her mother, pressing against Eve's back.
'It's okay, hon. I just need to find out what was making that racket. We don't want it starting up again.'
He was gone before Loren could protest any more, ducking through the doorway, silently cursing the sudden power cut. Nevertheless, by the time he reached his and Eve's bedroom, his eyes had adjusted to the darkness some more. He felt his way along the side of the bed until he found the cold metal of the flashlight standing erect on the floor; there were no bedside cabinets in this stark room, just the bed itself, a tall chest of drawers, a high wardrobe set against one wall, and an oval mirror hung on another. He pressed the switch and the flashlight came on. He shone it towards the landing so that his wife and daughters would see its glow and feel reassured. He quickly padded back to his daughters, shining the light on Loren and Cally's beds first, and then into the suspect corner. It really was clear; no dark man lurked there.
'See?' he said. 'Nothing there at all.'
Leaving the bedroom again he returned to the cupboard out on the landing.
'Okay, you bastard,' Gabe muttered to himself, 'let's find out what the fuss is about.'
But all remained quiet now, although he didn't trust the silence.
He reached for the brass door handle and tugged it. The door did not move. He remembered he had locked it previously and he dropped his hand to the key below. Without giving himself time for further thought, he turned it.
Gabe felt the easing of pressure as the unlocked door shifted in its frame. He yanked the door open in one swift movement and shone the light beam into the cupboard's depths. Eve and the two girls joined him as he bent to peer inside. They stared nervously over his shoulder.
He shone the flashlight around the interior, checking the corners, the back and even the cupboard's ceiling. All that was there were the cardboard boxes, the rolled-up rug and the mop and broom that he had already discovered. Moving aside two of the boxes, he noticed there were two thinnish waterpipes running along the left wall an inch or so above the floor and disappearing into the back wall.
'Guess there's the answer.' Gabe's light-hearted tone was forced as he aimed the beam directly at the two copper pipes. He reached down to feel them. 'One of 'em's hot. Might be an airlock in it.'
'Gabe, that can't be it. We saw the door move when the banging got really loud.'
He couldn't explain it and he didn't even try. He was looking for a rational reason for the noise; he didn't want to spook the girls any more than they were spooked already—and that included Eve.
'I'll check it out tomorrow,' he promised. As he straightened up, he kept the light pointing into the cupboard as if expecting an animal of some kind—a trapped bird maybe (although how a bird could have found its way inside, he had no idea), a mouse, a rat, or even a squirrel. Nothing stirred, though; nothing appeared from any hole in the skirting board; no bird fluttered out at them.
The overhead light and the one in the bedroom further down flickered, dimmed, came back on for a moment, dimmed once more, almost went off again, then returned to a steady glow.
'Thank God for that,' Eve murmured in a release of breath.
'Percy Judd said there were power cuts here and I think we've just experienced one. I'll take a good look at the gen tomorrow, see if I can fix it. It should kick in when the power goes.'
'This house…' Eve allowed her comment on Crickley Hall to peter out, the inflection in those first two words containing the message.
'Yeah, I know. We'll give it just one week, okay?'
Once more, Eve gave no response to the time limit set by Gabe even though he'd reduced it by a week. She wasn't sure she could stand as much as another day here. She knew it hadn't been the waterpipes creating that din and so did Gabe; he was only trying to soothe the girls with his unlikely—no, ridiculous—explanation.
'Let's all get back to bed,' he suggested, swinging the cupboard door shut and locking it again.
'Daddy, can we come in with you and Mummy tonight?' It wasn't Cally who asked but Loren, and her voice was plaintive.
'Sure you can.' He hugged his daughter close and Cally raised her arms to be picked up by Eve. But before they could find their way back to the bedroom, a mournful howl came from Chester in the kitchen below. Although the kitchen door was closed, the howl seemed to echo around the great hall.
Not only did the children sleep with Gabe and Eve that night, but the dog also slept on the floor close to Gabe's side of the bed.
14: SUNDAY
Gabe had cleaned the generator's spark plugs and reset the gauges. He'd also cleaned the oil filter and made sure that the coolant level was correct. Then he'd washed out the fuel filter and checked the gen's fuse, to find that it had blown, which was probably the sole cause for the machine's malfunction. Luckily he had a selection of different amp fuses in his toolbox, so was able to fit a replacement. Oil level was fine and he tested all the electrical connections to make sure it was not just the fuse that was at fault. The only thing he was concerned about was that if the generator had been standing idle for a long time, then the gas—petrol, he reminded himself—might have gone stale, which would mean draining and refilling it with fresh.
However, the latter proved to be no problem, for when he tested the gen by switching off the main fuse to the house's power, the generator sprang into life like a runner taking over the baton. Satisfied, he switched back to mains electricity and returned the generator to standby.