Gravenhunger (3 page)

It was going to be a long journey.

“I can’t do it,” muttered Phoenix, wiping the rain from his face and jiggling the key in the lock. “It just won’t open.”

His father lifted the bikes down from the roofrack and leaned them up against the wall of the manor. Then he brought the bags over to the front door and held out his hand for the key.

“Let me try,” he said. “It was like this when I came down before. It took me for ever to get in.”

He pushed the key into the lock and turned it to the right, then jerked the old brass handle towards him.

The door shuddered open at last, creaking on its hinges, and a damp chill seeped across the threshold to greet them.

Ahead lay a vast entrance hall, bigger than any room Phoenix had ever set eyes on.

It was as unwelcoming as it was huge, its walls dark with damp, its paintwork peeling, its flagstoned floor bare and uncarpeted. In the centre a wooden staircase spiralled up and away out of sight and in one corner a grandfather clock glared down at them, its unmoving hands stuck at twenty minutes to four.

Dr Wainwright heaved their luggage in from the rain and glanced at his watch.

“I’m going to have to leave you to it, I’m afraid,”
he said. “I don’t want Rose waiting at the station. Why don’t you choose yourself a room and make up the bed? The sheets and pillowcases are in that bag there.”

Phoenix nodded. “Dad?”

“Yes?”

“Does Rose know about all this? About the house having belonged to Mum, I mean?”

Dr Wainwright shook his head. “No. I had to explain things to her parents, of course, but I asked them to keep it to themselves. I thought we could tell her once she was here – after you’d had a chance to get used to the idea.”

“Can’t we just not tell her at all?” asked Phoenix. “I mean, it’s our business, isn’t it, not anybody else’s?”

His father gave a small smile.

“I think we’ll have to tell her sooner rather than later. I mean, this isn’t exactly your usual holiday accommodation, is it? But I’m sure we can keep things vague for the moment, especially if you feel so strongly about it.” He turned towards the door. “I’ll pick up some essentials on the way back. Matches and firelighters for a start. It looks like we might be needing them later on. Goodness only knows what’s happened to the weather.”

Halfway to the car he stopped.

“You’ll stay near the house, won’t you?” he called
back through the rain. “The grounds are pretty wild to say the least. We can have a bit of an explore tomorrow, perhaps. But I don’t want you going beyond the garden without me, OK?”

Phoenix rolled his eyes. “I can look after myself, you know. I told you, I’m not a kid any more.”

His father sighed.

“I’m well aware of that,” he replied. “But you’re still my son.”

He hurried on towards the car and opened the door before turning round once again.

“And you’re all I’ve got.”

Phoenix flushed.

He stared down at the grey stone floor, listening as the car revved up and crunched across the gravelled driveway.

Only when he was sure he was quite alone did he make his way across the hallway, his footsteps echoing on the flagstones.

He stopped at the foot of the staircase and looked up into the eerie gloom.

The bed-making business could wait till later. Somewhere up there was his mother’s old room – the room from which she had gazed out at the sea and the river and the pine forest – and before he did anything else, he was going to find it.

3.
THE WARNING

He was doing it again. Craning over her shoulder and wheezing with the effort of reading the text in the far corner of the page. It was really starting to get on her nerves.

Rose gave the old man a sidelong glance and snapped the guidebook shut.

If he wanted to read
A Guide to Gravenhunger
then he could go and buy a copy for himself. She was sick to death of sharing hers.

Not that it was proving exactly fascinating reading: so far it seemed to be just one long list of attractions. What to do on the pier; what to do in the arcades along the seafront; where to go and what to do in the town itself. She would have been much better off buying a magazine instead.

Rose looked out of the window.

They had to be very nearly there: gulls wheeled overhead and towards the horizon she could make out the occasional tantalizing sparkle of sea.

And now she could see something else too – the end of a station platform…

“Not so fast, young lady!” wheezed the old man, as she sprang to her feet. “No one’s getting out here. We go straight through this one.”

Sure enough the train was rattling past the platform edge, too quickly for Rose to read the name on the signs, too quickly for her to notice anything much more than a station overgrown with weeds.

For a couple of seconds they were engulfed in a blur of brambles and bindweed and peeling paint.

And then it was behind them, and they were rushing onward between rows of pastel-coloured seaside houses towards their destination.

It was almost as if the little station had not existed.

“Gravenhunger Reach,” declared the old man solemnly as Rose sat back down. “There’s not been a train pulled up there in years. No need for it, you see. Not now there’s nobody living at the house.”

“What house?” asked Rose, turning to meet the old man’s gaze.

His face was brown and crinkled like a walnut, his mouth puckered up and thin, but his eyes were
sharp enough, bright as pins and the colour of
forget-me
-nots.

“Gravenhunger Manor,” he replied. “The big house on the other side of the river. No one’s lived there for years and years.”

“But that’s where I’m going,” said Rose. “It’s where I’m staying this summer.”

The old man gaped at her, revealing a mouthful of crooked yellow teeth.

“But you can’t be!” he exclaimed. “Gravenhunger Manor’s all packed up and empty.”

“I guess someone must have opened it back up,” said Rose, shrugging.

The old man muttered something under his breath, then gave way to another bout of coughing.

“It’s well known in the area, is it, this Gravenhunger Manor?” asked Rose, when he had recovered himself.

“I should say so,” said the old man. “Round here
everyone’s
heard of it. There’s that many stories about the place.”

He leaned forward, his face now so close to Rose she could feel the warmth of his whisky breath on her skin.

“You want to take good care of yourself, young lady. There’s some say Gravenhunger Manor’s haunted.”

Rose suppressed a laugh.

“Right,” she said. “I’ll – er – bear that in mind.” She cleared her throat. “And you say no one’s lived there for some time?”

“Not for over thirty years,” said the old man. “Not since…”

But whatever he was about to say was drowned out by an announcement that they were arriving at Gravenhunger, and by the time Rose had heaved her rucksack down from the luggage rack and settled it on to her back, she had been caught up in the sea of passengers preparing to leave the train, and the old man had disappeared.

Fighting her way down the aisle, Rose reached the train doors at last and stepped out on to the
sun-drenched
platform.

In the distance she could see her uncle waving at her from the ticket barrier.

She waved back, smiling.

This was the moment she had been waiting for all day: a light sea breeze ruffled her hair and she could taste the tang of salt on her lips.

Halfway along the platform she felt a hand on her shoulder. Spinning round, she came face to face with the old man.

“Just you remember what I said,” he hissed. “It’s a funny old place, Gravenhunger Manor. Strange things happen there, you mark my words.”

He fixed her with his forget-me-not eyes.

“Don’t go wandering off on your own, that’s my advice. And whatever you do, keep away from the mound on the other side of the river.”

Rose blinked at him, then turned and headed on towards the station exit.

Really, there was no stopping some people’s imaginations.

On the fourth-floor landing Phoenix paused.

Something here just wasn’t adding up.

I could see the blue sea from my bedroom window
– those were the words his mother had used in her letter.
I could see the blue sea from my bedroom window and the river running at the bottom of the pine forest
.

Well, he’d lost count of the number of windows he’d looked through – there had to be at least six or seven bedrooms on each floor – and all he’d seen through the rain was the forest on every side of the house and the overgrown garden at the back. There had been no sign of any river however hard he had strained his eyes, and not even the faintest glimpse of sea.

He could have sworn he’d seen only four storeys when he’d looked up at the manor from outside earlier on. But was it possible there was another floor, a room higher up that he’d somehow missed?

Phoenix scoured the wall in front of him.

There was a bookcase packed with dusty volumes … a portrait of a young woman dressed in green velvet … a threadbare tapestry…

And then he saw it, half concealed behind the tapestry: a small, brass doorknob.

He hesitated for a moment, his hand on the doorknob, then gave it a sharp twist and pulled open an oak-panelled door.

A dark stairwell stretched before him, its narrow steps spiralling up and out of sight.

Phoenix began to climb, wincing at the creak of ancient floorboards beneath his feet.

One … two … three…

Four … five … six…

He steadied himself against the stairway walls.

Seven … eight…

Ahead of him was another door.

Phoenix reached out and turned the handle.

There was a groan of wood and the door swung open to reveal a low-beamed attic room, furnished with a bed and a chest of drawers.

It was smaller than the other rooms – more of a garret, really.

And there was something else different about it too.

Even through the rain he could see it, sparkling in a distant patch of sunlight like a treasure trove of
jewels. The promised view of the sea – and much closer, the occasional flash of river as it wove its way seaward past the pine trees.

Phoenix let out a long sigh.

So this had been his mother’s bedroom. Only for a few weeks, maybe. Only until the terrible secret thing, whatever it was, had driven her family from the house for ever. But this room he was standing in right now had belonged to her.

Fumbling inside his pocket, he drew out the silver angel and nestled it in the palm of his hand.

He stroked his thumb over its wings, the sculpted metal rough and hard against his skin.

Had she had it then, he wondered – a little brighter perhaps, a bit less scratched and tarnished, but the same nevertheless?

Phoenix folded his fingers around his mother’s keepsake and squeezed it tightly, then slid it back into his pocket and crossed to the window.

Something had caught his eye – something rising up between the river and the sea, set all on its own in the middle of a stretch of land and wreathed in ribbons of swirling mist…

…a vast, barrow-shaped mound.