The top spun faster, faster, the humming pitched higher, higher…
And then she experienced a blissful peace, a consuming warmth that could only be described as spiritual, its catalyst the spinning toy.
She moaned as in the whirling bleached brightness she saw the dancing children reappear but without colour, only in subtle shades of ghostly grey. Eve's head felt light and giddy, but her gaze never abandoned the soft spinning images before her. The humming transcended into voices and they belonged to children at play a long distance away. She searched for Cam's voice among them, but there were too many to distinguish just one.
The spinning top began to lose speed and the voices reverted to the high-pitched humming, which now dropped to a softer thrumming, which then sank into a drone, which sank to a dissonant groan. The colours returned, the patterns reappeared, the painted children continued their dance. The top rocked on its base, then came to a gradual stop.
There was a stillness in the kitchen until Eve blinked and swayed against the counter.
Outside, the sun still shone intermittently through breaks in the scudding clouds.
Inside the house, there was only quietness.
Until a child's voice called out to her.
21: DANCING DUST
It was neither excited nor urgent; just a small voice calling from a distance.
'Mummy.'
At first, Eve had to dissociate it from the other voices she had heard while entranced by the bright whirling toy. It was a little cry, but at the top of its range and it entered the kitchen from across the cavernous hall.
'Mummy,' it came again and Eve, still lost in her imaginings, languidly stirred. Instinctively she moved towards the sound, a mother's natural response to the call of her child. Dazed, expectant, she hoped beyond all realistic hope that it was her son's voice she heard. Her heart beat faster; her breath was caught in her throat.
She stopped in the kitchen's open doorway and stared across the broad expanse of flagstones at her daughter, who stood at the turn of the stairway opposite. Sunlight flooded through the tall window behind her, transforming a drab mausoleum into a room of antiquated charm. Dark wood panelling blazed intricate grains of brown and honey, the stone slabs of the floor had mellowed to a soft yellow, and old pieces of furniture were given fresh grandeur.
'Look, Mummy.' Cally, with her pink teddy bear tucked under her arm, pointed at the middle ground between them.
Eve looked, but all she could see was thousands—millions—of golden dust motes drifting in the air as if disturbed by the warm rays from outside mingling with the cold draughts of the hall itself to generate lively breezes that carried glittering particles which wheeled and turned and dazzled like a galaxy of minute, shifting stars.
Eve gasped at the splendour, but she did not yet see as her daughter saw. She remembered the dust storm in the attic dormitory yesterday, how it had risen and whirled in the glare of their torches, but it had been nothing like this, nowhere near as thick and fast moving. These radiant particles seemed to be forming definite patterns.
Cally giggled. 'See them, Mummy, you see them dancing?'
And that was when Eve began to discern shapes among the tiny purling dust motes. It was like staring into one of those illusory picture puzzles where hidden in repetitious patterns were individual objects, persons or animals; unfocused eyes had to be used until, usually quite suddenly, the main image appeared in 3-dimensional effect. The same kind of thing seemed to be happening to Eve right now. The figures inside and also made of swirling dust became clear in a rush. They were still part of the great mass filling the sunlight in the hall, but they suddenly took on individuality, images emerging from the whole while still remaining part of it. The closest of the children had their backs to her as they danced past, holding hands, moving from right to left in a circle so that she could now make out the children facing her on the other side. The spinning top! They were like the children on the spinning top! Dancing in a ring, holding hands, their legs bending and straightening as they skipped along, as if they were real children, not just colourful illustrations. And now she heard their happy chants, distant as before, but nevertheless voices raised in happy union.
The same warmth as before came back to her—that spiritual warmth—and she wanted to weep because there was a sadness mixed with the joy, a longing, a yearning, for something that could not yet be.
She became lost in the vision. Fantasy or revelation, what was it meant to be? Cally saw them too; she jumped up and down on the small square landing at the turn of the stairs and she pointed at the dancing children, crying out at the fun of it. Because of that, Eve knew that it was real, it was no hallucination: she shared the sight with her daughter.
She could not see their faces clearly, but she could at least make out their attire, the boys in short trousers and braces, the girls in frocks and some with plaits in their hair. Shoes were not visible, but Eve could see socks on the boys, most rumpled down round ankles. She tried desperately to distinguish their features, but it was like watching a moving stippled painting, the dust motes representing the stippling. But she could count them as they passed by. There were nine of them. Nine children. Nine little headstones down at the church graveyard. Nine out of the eleven child victims that had been taken by the flood more than half a century ago.
Why were their ghosts still here?
What could be here for them at Crickley Hall?
It was as though the questions had broken the vision.
For everything changed.
•
The sunlight disappeared, the sun obscured by an immense roiling raincloud, and the great hall was once more thrown into gloom and shadow. Rain pattered on the tall window and Cally's figure on the landing was suddenly shaded.
Eve felt her heart lurch, as if fear itself had entered the hall. Before her, the swirling specks of dust that had glittered so brilliantly but a moment ago dispersed, then disappeared. Eve either heard, or imagined she heard, a faraway wail that swiftly faded to a barren silence broken only by the rain on the windowpanes.
'No, wait—' Eve began to plead but almost instantly there was nothing left of the dancing wraiths or the dust that had constructed them.
Eve's body sagged as if a peculiar despair had hit her, and she almost sank to her knees. But she soon stiffened when she heard a new sound. Cally had heard it too and she was looking wide-eyed up at the landing above her. Eve slowly turned her head, following her daughter's gaze, her eyes lifting.
Swish-thwack! The sound came. Again: swish-thwack! A pause, again: swish-thwack. It seemed to be moving along the landing, although there was no one there to be seen.
Swish-thwack! Swish-thwack! Moving towards the stairway.
To Eve it sounded like something smacking leather… no, like something smacking against flesh. The swish of its fall, the thwack when it hit.
Swish-thwack!
The loudest of all, at the top of the stairs.
Then, nothing more.
Only the rain continuing to beat against the window.
22: THE CARD