Chapter Ten
‘W e could stay in and watch a film. Halloween or Scream , a cheesy romcom, whatever you wanted.’
Mum was sitting at the kitchen table, sorting through a Tupperware box full of packets of herbs and spices, most of them probably out of date.
‘It’s Kira’s birthday, so I can’t stay in tonight.’ I pulled my mascara wand through my eyelashes, peering at myself in the hall mirror.
‘It’s already dark out. Where are you going?’
‘Just around the village.’ I couldn’t look at her, and knew I should have come up with a more solid lie, but if I said I was going to Kira’s, there was a chance she would call Kira’s mum and we’d get busted. ‘But there’s five of us. Freddy will be there, and Orwell and Ethan. We’ll be fine, Mum.’
‘You’ve been talking about this Ethan a lot, lately.’ She sipped her tea, and I saw the tremor as she lowered her mug to the table. But she was fine, she’d had three good days, and her friend Helen might be coming over later.
‘Ethan’s been hanging out with us,’ I said, not for the first time. I didn’t add that since our kiss on the beach, we’d tried to get as much time together as we could, just the two of us – which wasn’t actually that much. ‘He’s nice, and he’s new at school, so he needed some friends.’
‘I don’t know him,’ Mum said. ‘You should bring him round.’
‘Maybe. Not tonight though.’ I put on my black jacket and arranged my ponytail artfully over one shoulder. I tried to picture what was waiting for us, the spooky house on top of the cliffs and what it might be like inside.
‘Right.’ My rucksack was heavier than usual because I had my copy of The Whispers of the Sands . I wanted to take one of S. E. Artemis’s books, and this was the last one she’d written in that house. ‘I’m off.’
‘Last chance.’ Mum held up a tub of sweet and salty popcorn, her smile wide, as if she was on QVC and trying to sell it to me. ‘I bought this from the farm shop. Thought we deserved a treat.’
I winced, because we could barely ever afford anything from the farm shop. ‘We could have a film night tomorrow?’ I kissed her on the cheek. ‘I can’t abandon Kira on her birthday.’
‘You need to be careful, Georgie.’
‘Of course we’ll be careful,’ I said as the doorbell rang.
Kira was wearing a tiara, her dark hair straightened so it hung in glossy curtains, Freddy had on more eyeliner than I’d ever worn, Orwell was peering past me into our hallway and then there was Ethan, standing at the back, taller than everyone else.
His eyes were already on me when I looked at him and smiled.
‘Birthday, baby!’ Kira shouted. ‘Let’s go!’ She pulled me outside and, laughing, I closed my front door, refusing to glance behind me to confirm that Mum was watching us out of the window.
‘Fuck this hill’s steep,’ Freddy panted as we trudged up the road out of the village, towards the dark hulk I would always think of as Tyller Klos.
The sea was the midnight blue of fortune-teller curtains, the white froth of every wave luminous below a star-pricked sky.
The moon was high, giving the landscape a frosted glow, and a chill wind slunk around us, cooling the sweat on my palms.
‘Are you all right?’ Ethan slipped his hand into mine. ‘You seem tense.’
I laughed. ‘We’re about to go into an abandoned house. Break in, in fact.’
‘That’s all it is?’
‘Isn’t that enough?’
He didn’t reply, and my shoulders sagged. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to snap at you. It’s Mum stuff.’
‘Is she OK?’
‘She’s good at the moment, health-wise, but she didn’t want me to come tonight.’
‘Because she knows you’re breaking into a dangerous clifftop property that’s been left to the elements for over a decade?’
I laughed and squeezed his hand. ‘I wouldn’t put it past her to have found out somehow. She’s so protective of me.’
‘You’re all she’s got,’ Ethan said, and I could hear the shrug in his voice. ‘But it’s not fair of her to stop you doing what you want. You’re there for her when she needs you.’
‘I try to be,’ I said quietly. ‘What about you? Did your folks give you a hard time about coming out tonight?’
‘They were too busy grounding Sarah.’
‘Oh, really? What’s she done?’
‘The usual. Some light vandalism, skipping school, shouting at her teachers when she does bother to turn up.’
‘Wow.’ I tried to imagine the slender, petulant girl I’d met doing all that. ‘She’s still unhappy, then.’
‘Yeah. I don’t … I’m not sure what the answer is, but I’m pretty sure grounding isn’t it. She’s going to rebel more. I nearly didn’t come tonight.’
‘Oh.’ I thought how much my excitement would have dimmed without him there. ‘I’m glad you did.’
‘Me too,’ he said, as we reached the dilapidated wall than ran around the once-grand property.
‘Here we are guys!’ Freddy announced it like we were on a tour of tourist hotspots, and this was the pièce de résistance.
We walked along the wall until we found a section that had completely fallen down, and took turns to step over it into the overgrown garden.
Twigs and leaves swiped at my arms and legs as we waded through the vegetation, then we angled a trio of torch beams up at the front of the house.
It had a dull stone facade and a steep, angular roof, cracked window boxes with any flowers long since gone, the paved pathway sprouting with weeds.
Ornate details in the window frames looked like gasping, screaming faces in the stark torchlight.
‘That is one spooky building,’ Kira murmured, and Freddy grabbed her hand.
‘Come on Mr Architect,’ Orwell said. ‘It was your idea so you’re in charge.’
‘Right.’ Ethan walked up to the front door and rattled the chain. ‘This one’s secure, and the padlock looks new.’
‘Arse.’ Freddy sighed. ‘Let’s do a circuit and see if there’s another way in. Call out if you find anything.’
He and Kira headed left, and I followed Ethan right, with Orwell bringing up the rear.
We tried each window as we passed, but they were all locked.
When we got to the side of the house, Alperwick appeared below us, with lights twinkling and smoke coming from chimneys, the inky sea to our left.
It was straight out of a fairy tale, and the witch’s house was looming behind us.
I shivered, and Ethan took my hand again.
‘Come on.’ I saw his smile in the glow from his torch. ‘Let’s check the back door.’
It was Kira who found our way in, a window on the cliff side of the house unlocked, creaking slowly open when she prized it away from the frame. ‘I broke a nail,’ she announced gleefully, the pane swinging outwards, silently inviting us in.
‘You fucking genius.’ Freddy picked her up and spun her round and then, one by one, we climbed through the window, into the real-life Tyller Klos.
The air was cloying and smelled of mould, and I covered my mouth with my sleeve, a crunch of debris beneath my feet. The room we were in was small, and there was no furniture left, the place bare besides structural features and fittings.
‘How old is it, do you think?’ Kira asked.
‘Nineteenth century,’ Ethan said without a pause. ‘The high-pitched roof, the decorative moulding – look.’ We peered up, seeing the floral shapes framing the ceiling. Something scuttled to our left and I jumped, leaning into him. He put his arm around my shoulders.
‘Let’s go to the big room at the front,’ Kira said. ‘Escape whatever that was.’
‘The rats will have the run of the place,’ Orwell pointed out. ‘Hey, do you think that old lady is still here? What if she died in her bed and nobody noticed, and the rats have been snacking on her ever since?’
‘She moved into a bungalow in the village,’ I said, because I had researched S. E. Artemis’s life and career. Her decision to stop writing in the 1990s had compounded my devastation that the last book had ended the way it had.
‘She’s still in Alperwick?’ Kira asked.
‘As far as I know.’ There hadn’t been any press about her for a long time. ‘This place has been empty for almost twenty years.’
‘It’s well preserved.’ Ethan pressed his hand against the ornate door frame as Kira skipped ahead, into the room at the front of the house, and we all followed. ‘I don’t think we should try the stairs, though.’
‘We might fall through?’ Freddy sounded thrilled and horrified all at once.
‘We might.’
‘Here.’ Kira pulled a blanket out of her bag, followed by packets of crisps and a bottle of Absolut Vodka.
‘It’s nuts that nobody’s bought it,’ Freddy said.
‘I think some property developer owns it now. I don’t know why they’ve chosen not to refurbish it.’ Ethan’s gaze was everywhere, taking in as much detail as he could by the light of his torch.
‘Probably waiting until the land increases in value,’ Orwell said, taking a four-pack of beer out of his rucksack. ‘Loads of developers hold onto old properties or land until the prices go up and they can make a fortune selling it on.’
‘How do you know that?’ Freddy asked with a laugh.
‘My old man.’ Orwell shrugged.
Ethan was standing by the huge fireplace, running his hands over the mantelpiece and the decorative plasterwork that framed the hearth. ‘This is beautiful,’ he murmured, then crouched and shone his torch up into the dark space.
‘Careful,’ Orwell said. ‘You don’t know what’s been hidden up there. Could be a dead cat, and if you start poking about, a tiny skeleton will rain down on you.’
‘Gross,’ Kira said. ‘Orwell, have you forgotten that it’s my birthday?’
‘We’re in an abandoned house,’ he replied. ‘You didn’t pick a luxury hotel with a six-course meal and champagne for your celebration, so this is what you get.’
‘Murdered pets is still a low bar,’ Freddy said as he helped Kira spread the blanket on the dusty floorboards.
I crouched and took my own blanket out of my bag. It was fleecy, one of those ones that rolled up really tightly, navy blue with white stars all over it. I spread it on the floor and looked up to see Ethan watching me.
I sat down and patted the space next to me. ‘Come and join me on my blanket of stars.’
He sat beside me and took a bottle of gin and a packet of peanut M&Ms out of his coat pocket, adding them to our haul.
I tried to ignore the creaks and groans from the open doorway behind me, the rustling, scuttling noises that sent goosebumps racing over my skin.
‘What now?’ Ethan asked, handing me the gin bottle. ‘What do you want to do, Kira?’
‘Now?’ Kira took a swig of vodka and passed the bottle to Freddy, then held her torch under her chin so her face looked surreal, the shadows of her eyelashes like spiders’ legs on her cheeks, her eyes black voids of nothing. ‘Now, we tell each other ghost stories.’