A clutch of people had gathered to see the breaking of the earth, their breath mingling in the cool morning air where it lingered and collected as a cloud of light mist. They watched as giant metal teeth bit into the ground, tearing it asunder in the name of progress. Some clapped, others thrust their hands deep into their pockets and huffed out stale air in small wet puffs as that thing called progress made its mark on dead land.
A single watcher stood firm and still, refusing to show reaction and wondering how long it would be before old, long-extinguished life would be revealed. Her bones had been planted long ago. Her flesh had nourished the earth and made gluttons of the worms while maggots had grown fat on the meat and the memory of her. The watcher wondered if any human remembered her now. If they didn’t, they would soon. The metal teeth were chewing the earth a mere fifty feet from where she lay; it was just a matter of time. When she saw the light of day again she would be greeted with an urgency she had never known in life. They would want to know all about her then. The watcher was sure of it.
A glance towards the proud developer, who oozed abundance in his expensive coat, who rubbed his hands in anticipation at what he believed would come. Wealth, recognition, kudos. The watcher smiled with a wry twist of the mouth. The man might as well build his houses out of glass and pray that no one would cast the first stone. It was all as fragile as that. They were standing on a teetering precipice between past and present, on earth as crumbling and friable as that which fell in crumbs and clods from the bucket of the JCB.
The watcher turned away and began to walk. All things must come to an end and the peace of Essen Grange would come to an end too. The watcher could feel it and hear it in the grind of the machinery. Everything that was familiar and safe was breathing its last in the screech of metal and gears.
The watcher was as broken as the ground that was succumbing to change. Everything had to alter eventually and the bones would mark the beginning.
In the moment that Maura turned into the drive and caught her first glimpse of Essen Grange, she knew she had made a mistake in accepting this job. A dire mistake.
She’d had her first sneaking suspicion of it fifteen minutes before when she’d stopped at the village shop. The man behind the counter had shown an interest at seeing a stranger in the area and had asked her where she was heading. The mention of Essen Grange had caused him to raise his eyebrows and look at her as if she was at least one sandwich short of a picnic. The woman waiting behind her had said, ‘Want to be careful up there, love. There’s them as go in that never come out.’
The woman’s words had resulted in a protracted nod of agreement from the man and a hesitant, defensive smile from Maura. What was it with villagers and local “colour”? She had taken her pack of mints and her change and walked from the shop shaking her head in amused disbelief.
It was only when she caught her first glimpse of the house that was to be her temporary home that she began to wonder if their casual gossip had been a warning. She might have made more of it at the time if it hadn’t been for the distraction of a little girl outside the shop. The girl was wearing a nurse’s outfit and bandaging a doll while she waited with her mother on a bench at the bus stop. It had made Maura smile. She’d been that girl years ago, all dressed up and ready to tend to the world and its ills. She still was, but it wasn’t so thrilling when you were all grown up and the patients were real and had a habit of bleeding or puking on the uniform and communicating with a vocabulary consisting mostly of base profanity. That too made her smile and it was a good sign. It had been a long time since she’d felt the urge to smile.
Swathed in ribbons of winter mist, the Grange loomed, a monolith of ugliness unredeemed by any sense of heritage. It was like a rotten tooth rising proud in a diseased gum and stood in stark contrast to the bright new housing development she had just driven through. Essen Grange had a brooding menace that made the hairs on the back of her neck rise and prickle.
‘The house that Frankenstein built,’ she muttered, suppressing a shudder as she looked at it through her windscreen. It had been stitched together over centuries by the looks of it, but with no plan – just the fads of the day tacked on without thought or design. The only thing that softened it was the ivy, though even that hung in drab, heavy swags that added more atmosphere than charm. There had never been any roses around the Grange’s door, she was certain of that. It made her own modest home look like a haven of comfort in comparison, and that had been a lonely enough place of late.
It was too late to turn back. The deal was done; she had agreed to take the job. Not that she had taken much persuading. Like a desperate idiot, she had jumped at it – had even been flattered to hear that she had been personally requested, though she hadn’t had the foresight to ask who had made the request. Besides, there was nothing to go back to. Just an empty house with nothing to do but sit there night after night, the ghosts of the past competing with her rage and grief to see which of them could defeat her first. One of them had been ringing Maura incessantly throughout the journey. Not a ghost, but someone who might as well have been: a sister who had a committed a cardinal sin and now wanted forgiveness. Maura could neither forgive nor forget – not yet – and had almost thrown the phone out of the window in sheer frustration. Instead she had switched it off and thrown it into the foot well of the car. She might be angry; she might even be running away – but she wasn’t stupid. No one travelled into unknown territory and threw away their phone. Not even women who took jobs without asking sensible questions.
Maura’s head told her that, for all its sinister countenance, the Grange had to be a better bet than home and constant harassment by her sister. Her gut did not agree. It lurched like a drunk on a boat as she looked up at the house. Her instinct insisted that something was off, something wasn’t right, and it would not agree with what her head was telling her: that she should pull herself together, stop being an idiot and get on with it. She should have run then. She should have climbed back in the car, turned around and driven away in a cloud of dust and skidding gravel. But Maura had decided to be guided by her head, not her feelings. Feelings had proven most unreliable in the past and had led her into places she never wanted to revisit.
Swallowing the uneasy feelings down, she walked up to the porch, approached the door and gave the bell a tentative push, expecting to hear an echoing ring. She heard nothing, not even the hint of a distant chime. She waited for a long moment, wondering if the bell had sounded in some back recess of the house. Still nothing.
Hanging from the door was a knocker, a rusting iron ring gripped in the snarling teeth of a lion’s mouth. It looked as if it would take two hands to lift it, and as if the sound it might make could wake the dead – or something worse. Maura had no idea what ‘worse’ might be and cursed her overactive imagination, yet she couldn’t quite convince herself not to feel a sense of dread. Just because instincts could be ignored, it didn’t mean they disappeared. ‘Get a grip woman,’ she told herself. ‘It’s just a house, and it must have a back door.’
She found the tradesman’s entrance at the back of the house, nestled in the corner of a brick-paved courtyard amidst a sea of other doors that, in the low-lying mist, could have been portals to anywhere. It was the only door that showed signs of regular use; the rest looked like unused sheds, their paint peeling and flaking from neglect. A pair of wellington boots stood to the side of the door that she assumed must lead into the kitchen. A steamed-up window prevented her from looking in, but as she approached she heard the whine of a gas kettle ramping up to screaming point and knew she had found the right place. As she was about to knock the kettle ceased its whine. With her hand poised she paused. To her astonishment, she heard a muffled yet familiar voice filtering through the open window – it stopped her in her tracks and her hand fell to her side.
What on earth was Philip Moss doing in there?
‘You worry too much. Besides, no one’s going to say anything. No one will believe him. I’ve made sure of that. Anyway, they’re all in