They hurried their pace, Loren moving slightly ahead of her father, passing by the front door—the family generally used the kitchen door for exit and entry now, because the front-door key was too long and cumbersome to carry comfortably. By the time Gabe turned the corner of the house, she was inserting her key into the lock. She waited for him before pushing the door open.
From behind her, Gabe reached in and flicked on the light switch. They blinked at the sudden brightness, then both headed for the open doorway into the hall, Gabe leaving the portfolio propped up against a kitchen table leg.
'Mum!' Loren called out from the hall's threshold. There was no answer.
Quickly becoming aware of the vast room's deep coolness, they stopped in their tracks.
'Hell,' Gabe muttered, perplexed. By now, he was used to the house's chill despite the working radiators and the fires he lit in various rooms, but this was something else. This was like stepping into a deep-freeze again.
'Daddy, look.' Loren was standing perfectly still in front of him, but her head was upturned as she looked at the galleried landing above. He caught sight of them, but oddly he couldn't focus on any.
They sped along the landing, fleeting wisps of—of what? Small stringy smoke clouds, hazy drifts of fog? White shadows? On their first day here, Loren had claimed to have seen what she called a white shadow outside her bedroom door—was this what she meant? But now there were several, streaking, gliding along the landing, separate entities like—like spectres—in a rush. As Gabe and Loren's eyes grew accustomed to the poor light and the depthless shadows it seemed to induce, they saw more of these vaporous moving shrouds on the broad stairway, so faint they were scarcely visible. They darted down to the hall itself to scatter this way and that as if confused.
It was an impossible sight, all the more implausible because of the vagueness of the shapes; nevertheless, Gabe felt the skin at the back of his neck stiffen, the iciness there sharp, almost stinging.
He moved in front of Loren as if to shield her, but incredibly there was no fear on her face, only a kind of astonished awe. Without further thought, he took a step back to the side of the kitchen doorway, where a row of brown light switches was situated, and pushed all three of them down with the edge of his hand.
The light—mainly from the ironwork chandelier high overhead, but also from two single, shaded hanging lights along the L-shaped landing—was ungenerous, but it at least cleared the air of the phantasms. Gabe was relieved, but still mystified.
'Eve!' he called out. 'Eve, where are you?'
He and Loren heard the low cry at the same time and both looked towards the open sitting-room door. Despite the overhead illumination, the darkness beyond the doorway was hardly softened; it was almost as if a solid black barrier barred entry. Gabe and Loren hurried towards it, passing the open cellar door on the way, and they reached the room together.
Without thought, Gabe leaned in, his fingers scrabbling round for the wall light switch, and it was like dipping his hand into thick ink so intense was the blackness there. He nearly pulled back from the awful stench that seemed to saturate the air, but he resisted the impulse, guessing his wife was somewhere there in the darkness.
Even as he sought the switch, which was at least a foot further along than he remembered, he heard Loren gasp beside him. Then he saw it too, by the dismal glow thrown out by the almost extinguished fire in the hearth. There were two figures sitting there in the dark, one in the room's armchair, the other—he knew by instinct this was Eve—on the couch, face half-turned towards something—something even blacker than the room's dense umbra—that stooped over her.
His urgent fingers finally found the light switch and struck it down. The light almost seemed reluctant to fulfil its role, for it came on dimly at first, increasing in power in slow, progressive stages, taking seconds to glow brightly. It was as if the darkness itself had fought against it.
Only Eve and an unfamiliar fair-haired woman occupied the sitting room and both sat like pale statues, perfectly still as if scared rigid.
Only then did the fire flame back into life.
43: CONFLICT
Gabe let his anger rip.
'Tell me again what happened a few minutes ago. You say there was a ghost standing over Eve, but it disappeared when I came in the room with Loren and switched on the light.'
'I don't know that it was a ghost,' Lili replied evenly, avoiding the engineer's fierce gaze. 'It was an entity of some sort, that's all I can tell you, and it wished us harm. We both saw it, a… a black shape that was reaching for Eve until you disturbed it. Somehow it lost its power and faded. Maybe it was the lights that did it, I just don't know.'
'But you say the place is haunted.' Gabe glared at the psychic, concerned that Eve was being too easily influenced by her.
'Eleven children were drowned in this house over sixty years ago, Mr Caleigh. Now something is preventing their spirits from passing over. We have to help them, we have to find out what's blocking their progress, we have to help them go to where they're meant to be.'
Gabe stopped his pacing to look down at her.
If Lili felt intimidated, she did not show it. She went on: 'I also think your daughter is some kind of catalyst for the spirit children.'
'Come on…' Gabe groaned.
'It's not uncommon for astral spirits to use the pure psychic energy of young people—especially teenage or pre-teenage girls for some reason. The darkness and smell that was in this room went away when the light was turned on and Loren came in.'
Before he could interrupt, Lili asked a question. 'Has Loren felt unusually tired recently?'
'Why yes,' responded Eve, surprised. 'We all have, but especially Loren. She's complained of tiredness since we arrived here. We thought it was because of change of environment, or anxiety over starting at a new school. Or just, you know, part of the process of growing up.'
'She's at an age when her psychic energy is strong but all over the place. It's easily tapped into.'
Gabe's voice was incredulous. 'Are you saying our daughter is possessed?'
Lili shook her head vigorously. 'No, no, nothing like that. It's just a phenomenon that nobody can explain. You must've felt how cold it was in here earlier. It's because the spirits drain energy from the atmosphere itself. But their greatest source of power is from living people, particularly young people whose open minds have yet to be dulled by cynicism. That's why I turned towards spiritualism myself; I was used by a child ghost when I was a little girl—that was when I realized I had a special gift that no one else around me seemed to have.'
Gabe regarded Loren with concern. She had been allowed to remain in the room while her mother and the psychic related what had happened earlier because both he and Eve considered her mature enough to hear their discussion—after all, she had experienced some weird stuff herself in this place. Now he was beginning to regret the decision. Loren was sitting on the couch close to her mother and her eyes were intent on the psychic. Most kids believed in ghosts, he thought, but then many also believed in fairies. He returned his attention to the young blonde woman in the armchair.
'Listen, lady—'
'Her name's Lili,' Eve quickly interjected, annoyed at his rudeness—and his blunt refusal to accept what he was being told. 'Lili Peel.'
'Okay, sorry. I don't know what game you're playing, what interest you've got in all this, but you're twisting my wife's head. You got her believing everything you say.'
Eve was about to protest, but he held up a hand as if to ward her off.
'Now it so happens I don't believe in ghosts, never have, probably never will, but I admit something's going on here that isn't normal, so I guess you'd call it the paranormal. The house has certainly got bad vibes that I can't account for. But I do know you can't talk to the dead, not for real. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you're a phoney, I honestly believe you're sincere in what you say. I just don't go along with it and I don't want my wife and daughter to either. We got enough problems without this.'