Ann Pilling – The Witch of Lagg (страница 7)

There was a sudden tap on the door.

“That’ll be Prill,” Colin said, whispering just in case Aunt Phyllis was creeping about somewhere. “She wanted to talk to you as well.”

“Wait a minute.” Spread over Oliver’s bed was a navy-blue T-shirt with a collection of small bones on it. They were arranged in a definite pattern but Oliver had scooped them all up into a polythene bag before Colin could stop him.

“What did you do that for?” he said in frustration. “You said they were important, in – in your diary …” He went red.

“Not sure about them yet,” Oliver replied curtly. “Anyway, Prill’s squeamish. Don’t go on about them.” He shoved the bag under his pillow.

“Mr Grierson’s out there,” Prill said in a low voice, coming inside and shutting the door firmly. “I was just leaving my room, and I saw him. What’s he doing down here?”

“Eavesdropping probably,” Colin muttered. “We think there’s something peculiar about him.”

“You can say that again. I think he’s more than peculiar, I think he’s unhinged. He’s so violent, when he speaks to you, he sort of hisses. Allie’s absolutely terrified of him.”

“He’s got the devil in him,” Oliver announced flatly. “Duncan Ross said that, and for once I agree with him.”

The other two stared at him. “You don’t mean literally, Oll? What on earth are you talking about?” Colin said at last.

“I don’t know, quite,” Oliver said evenly, cupping his chin in his hands. “I just know there’s something wrong here, but I’m not at all sure it’s his fault. This awful behaviour’s not really typical apparently. He doesn’t usually rage quite so much at people, according to what Ma’s heard from Granny MacCann. He’s always been a loner, at least, he has since his wife died.”

“Well, he’s foul to the Rosses,” Colin said quietly. “Really foul.”

Oliver didn’t reply, he was obviously thinking about what might have soured the man, over the years. “His wife fell off a horse and was killed,” he informed them, “when their child was four.”

“Helen,” Prill murmured sadly, remembering the rocking-horse room.

“Yes, Helen. Well, that can’t have been much fun for him, being left on his own and everything, and he’s fallen out with her now, because she married someone he didn’t approve of. Then there’s the potty old mother, he looked after her for years and years. When he was a boy she used to drive him to church three times every Sunday, and make him learn great chunks of the Bible off by heart. If he got anything wrong she hit him. Well, that’s what Granny MacCann told Ma. No wonder he never goes to church these days.”

Colin and Prill exchanged sly glances. It sounded so like Oliver, an elderly religious mother, and being forced to go to church, and having to learn pieces of the Bible. Aunt Phyllis did that to him.

Oliver was still thinking of those red back to front bits in Grierson’s diary but he kept silent. Hugo Grierson had chosen the most agonized verses of the Psalms he could think of. Nothing cheerful like “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord” or “The Lord is My Shepherd”. He must be deeply guilty about something. What had he done? Had he got rich by embezzling other people’s money, or had he killed somebody? Lagg Castle was a perfect place for a murder, all those echoing corridors, all those pine forests outside, to hide the body in …

“Why were you so against those stones being moved, Oll?” Colin’s voice jerked him back to reality. “We could see you didn’t want them touched. That’s why we’ve come, really.”

“And because of what went on in the forest,” Oliver added firmly. “You’d better tell me what did happen, hadn’t you? I mean when you were on your own.”

Their ten year old cousin, undersized and feeble, now spoke with immense authority. There had been moments like this before, times when they almost feared Oliver, times when those curious pale eyes of his saw so much more in events than the eyes of ordinary people.

“Someone jumped on my back,” Colin said blankly, going cold at the very thought of it. “Someone I couldn’t see leapt on me, and dug their fingers into my neck, and … they were so light and quick about it I – I thought it was you.”

He expected some outraged response from poor Oliver who’d already had his diary read, and his private thoughts laid bare, but the boy didn’t seem at all angry. His face had darkened and he was obviously pursuing rather a different line of thought.

“So she is out,” he said, in a small voice, and he scratched his head thoughtfully.

“Who’s ‘out’?” demanded Prill, bewildered.

“Aggie Ross.”

“Oh, Oll,” Colin said impatiently. “That’s nuts. We’ve no idea who Aggie Ross is. She may just be some crony of Granny MacCann’s, or a relation of Duncan’s, for all we know.”

“And you can’t take what she says too seriously,” Prill chipped in. “I mean she’s so doddery. She’s probably wandering in her mind. Old people like her get all kinds of weird ideas.”

“She seemed perfectly sane and sensible to me,” Oliver said coldly, remembering how the Blakemans had cracked jokes about her being a witch. “’Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live’,” he said aloud. “Wonder how that comes into it?”

Colin looked at him keenly. “I saw that too. It was embroidered on that sampler behind the cabinet.”

“Perhaps Aggie Ross was a witch,” muttered Oliver.

“And perhaps that cairn was the remains of her house.”

“And we’ve broken into it,” Colin said, “and set her free. Is that what you’re getting at?”

“Could be.”

There was a long embarrassed silence. Oliver had had strange ideas before, but this was fantastic.

“If I’m right,” he went on, talking more to himself than to the others, “she won’t leave us alone. Something else will happen. You’ll see. Unless of course we take all the stones back again.”

Colin stared at him. He could just imagine what Angus Ross would say if a small boy asked him to dismantle a newly-repaired stone wall, to pacify a nonexistent witch.

They were still sitting there, looking at one another in blank confusion, when the door burst open and Aunt Phyllis appeared. She was not pleased.

“Ten thirty,” she snapped, consulting her watch. “What’s this, may I ask? A mothers’ meeting? Colin, Prill, off to bed at once! Lights out, Oliver, you know the rules. Have you cleaned your teeth?”

“Yes, Mother,” said a muffled voice from under the eiderdown. “And brushed my hair.”

He listened to Colin’s door bang shut, then to Prill’s. Ten minutes later he heard his mother climb into bed. They had adjoining rooms and the walls were very thin, only plasterboard partitions dividing up what had once been a vast storage area in the basement.

Soon she was snoring steadily. Oliver got out his diary, switched a little torch on, and re-read it. Then he lay back, thinking about witches, and about Aggie Ross and Granny MacCann.

Ma wouldn’t let him read spooky books, and she’d be very disturbed if she thought that he was getting seriously interested in witchcraft. She was a devout woman and the Bible warned against meddling with what it called “the powers of darkness”. But the text was there, on that sampler. What could it mean?

“Save me, Oh God, for the waters are come in, unto my soul.” Oliver had written it down in small neat capitals. The words filled him with sadness for Hugo Grierson, shut up all alone in this ugly old house. Why did he torment himself so? And why did he use mirror-writing? That struck him as extremely peculiar. Witches did things backwards. It seemed that the beauty of the sea and the woodlands of Lagg, instead of gladdening the man’s heart plunged him into black despair. It was a lovely place, but there was a kind of brooding sorrow about it all.

Oliver was tired, but he always read a little at night, to get himself off to sleep. He grinned as he heard his mother’s even snoring, and shone his high intensity pocket torch on the pages of his book. He’d smuggled it up here without her seeing it. It was The Bumper Annual of Great Horror Stories.

CHAPTER SIX

At the other end of the stone passage Prill had just sat up in bed. She was annoyed because it had taken her a long time to get off to sleep after that conversation with Oliver, and her hot water bottle had gone cold – a hot water bottle in August – but it was chilly in the dungeons at night. Then, just as she was drifting off at last, Aunt Phyllis had woken her up again.

When she’d opened her eyes she’d been dimly aware of footsteps coming and going, shuffling sort of steps, the kind you make if you slither along in flat rubber shoes. Aunt Phyllis had several pairs. She was obsessed about not making any unnecessary noise. Then Prill heard her singing softly to herself.

What on earth was the woman doing? She’d go mad if any of the children went round singing at one in the morning. She’d report it to the management (Dad), who’d warned them all that Mr Grierson was a funny customer and had to be handled with care. Yet here she was, singing at dead of night, and creeping up and down. Was she looking under all their doors, perhaps, to check that they’d obeyed lights out? Prill couldn’t understand it.