Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Benedict Doyle had always known that if he ever entered the house that had belonged to his great-grandfather, the ghost that had shadowed most of his own life would be waiting for him. If it had been possible to avoid coming to the house today, he would have done so – in fact he would have travelled to the other side of the planet if he could have managed it.
But the visit could no more be avoided than tomorrow's sunrise. In a couple of weeks he would be twenty-one, and Holly Lodge, that tall, frowning old place, would become his.
'You'll have to go through all the stuff that's in there,' his cousin Nina had said, with her customary bossiness. 'I shouldn't think you'll want much of it yourself, although my mother used to say there were some quite nice things in the house.'
It was all very well for Nina, whose life had been entirely ordinary, and who, if she ever encountered a ghost, would most likely breezily tell it to sod off.
Still, Nina was right about the house's contents needing to be sorted out before it was sold. The solicitors, who had administered the trust fund left by Benedict's parents, had let Holly Lodge to a series of tenants over the years, but it had been empty for the last two years. They assumed Benedict would want to sell it, rather than live in it. Would they be right?
'Yes,' said Benedict, who would not have lived in Holly Lodge if he had been homeless and starving. He said he would sort out the contents and sell the furniture, and agreed that the house must not stand empty through another winter. Yes, he would see to it. No, he was not putting it off, but he was busy at the moment. This was his third year at Reading and there were exams looming, revision – his finals were next year. You did not acquire a decent degree in law and criminology by sitting around doing nothing. He would go up to London at half-term, or perhaps Christmas ...
Inevitably it was Nina who pushed him into it. If nothing else, he should have the contents valued by an antique dealer, she said. As it happened, she knew someone who might help. Nina always knew someone who might help – she was constantly offering people to all her friends, from doctors and acupuncturists, to marvellous little boutiques who sold designer clothes at a fraction of the cost. Benedict thought he might have guessed in the present situation she would offer him an antique dealer.
'Her name's Nell West,' Nina said. 'She lived in London until her husband died, but she's based in Oxford now. I expect she'd travel to London for what's practically a house clearance though. She won't rip you off, either. I'll phone her, shall I?'
'Well, all right.' It was already the beginning of December and Benedict knew he would have to face up to entering the house. 'Make it just before Christmas. Say the eighteenth.'
It was to be hoped Nina's antique dealer contact would not turn out to be one of her butterfly-minded friends, playing at running a business. A young widow might be anything from a mournful workaholic to an extravagant dragonfly, squandering insurance money and trailing strings of lovers.
At first 18th December was far enough away not to matter, but as it got nearer Benedict was aware of an increasing nervousness. He woke on the morning of the 18th to find his stomach churning with apprehension.
London was a seething mass of Christmas shoppers. Benedict eyed them and wished his day could be as normal as theirs. He would far rather grapple with Oxford Street in the Christmas rush than enter an empty old house where God knew what might be waiting for him.
He had not been sure he would remember the way from the tube station and he had been more than half prepared to find himself lost and have to ask for directions. But when it came to it, he recognized the landmarks from twelve years ago – the clusters of shops, the scattering of restaurants, the jumble of house styles, interspersed here and there with single modern office buildings. But he thought that in the main this part of London, which was a kind of satellite suburb of Highbury, would not have looked much different in his great-grandfather's day.
Here was the road now – a polite-looking street, with large dwellings, some fronting on to the pavement, others standing behind hedges. Most of them looked as if they had been divided into flats and some had brass plates indicating they were doctors' or dentists' surgeries. Holly Lodge was halfway along – one of the few private residences left. The gardens were unkempt and the holly hedge that gave it its name was thick and spiky.
Benedict stood looking at the house for a long time, telling himself it had been empty for nearly two years, and that any old, empty house would look gloomy and forbidding on a grey December day. Twelve years ago he had believed in ghosts; these days he did not. There would not be anything waiting for him inside the house.
But there was. He knew it the minute he stepped inside.
Benedict's parents had died shortly after his eighth birthday, in a car crash which had also killed his grandfather who had been travelling with them.
Even now, he could remember the cold sick feeling that had engulfed him when Aunt Lyn, tears streaming down her face, told him what had happened. He had not really understood why his parents had been driving through an icy blizzard that day – he had supposed there was some important grown-up thing they had to do. Aunt Lyn, angrily dashing away tears, had said it was irresponsible of them to go haring across London in the middle of a fierce snowstorm with the roads like ice rinks and visibility virtually nil, and it was as well that Benedict, poor little scrap, had some family left who would take care of him. He would, of course, come to live with her and his cousin Nina.
Benedict had been too sick and numb with grief to care where he lived. He had not known his grandfather very well, so that part was not too bad, but the loss of his parents was devastating. He had to pack his clothes and go to Aunt Lyn's house. Aunt Lyn was kind and comforting, but she was not Benedict's mother and her house was not his house. He had stayed with her sometimes, because Aunt Lyn and Nina were supposed to be the lively ones of the family and Benedict's mother said he was apt to be too quiet and something called introverted. It would do him good, said his mother, to stay with Lyn and be with Nina who was always so sparky, and see if he could imbibe some of that spark.
'He won't,' said Benedict's father, who was quiet himself and liked Benedict the way he was. 'He'll retreat from the world into his books.'
'The way you retreat from the world sometimes,' said Benedict's mother. Benedict, who had been only a quarter listening to this exchange but who had been getting slightly worried in case his parents were going to have one of their very rare rows, heard the smile in his mother's voice and relaxed and went back into the book he was reading, which was Alice Through the Looking Glass and which he could read properly by himself now. It was just about the best book in the whole world.
After the crash he could not believe he would never hear his mother teasing his father like that again, nor could he believe he would never see the familiar faraway look on his father's face which his mother called retreating, but the rest of the family said was useless daydreaming.
That first night Aunt Lyn gave him the bedroom he always had, and Benedict closed the door and sat on the bed, refusing to go downstairs or join Aunt Lyn and Nina for a meal. He did not want to talk to anyone and he did not want to see anyone. He said this very politely, but he kept the door closed for the next two days, only going out to the bathroom. Aunt Lyn carried up meals on trays and did not seem to mind that he did not speak to her. Benedict had brought Alice Through the Looking Glass with him and he read it all the way through, then turned to the first page and read it all over again.
The funeral was four days later. Aunt Lyn came up to the bedroom to tell him about it, tapping on the door before coming in. It would be at the local church, she said, but Benedict need not go if he did not want to. Nina, who was fourteen, came up later to say if he had any sense he would stay in the house. Funerals were utterly gross. There would be coffins and stuff like that, and everyone would cry. She was going, said Nina importantly, because everyone else was and there was a grown-up party afterwards.
'It's not a party,' said Aunt Lyn in exasperation. 'I keep telling you it's not a party.'
'I don't care what it is, it's at a big house I've never been to, and there'll be food and I can wear black and that's seriously gothic.' Nina was into being gothic at the time.
Benedict did not want to go to a party that would have his parents in coffins and at which people would be seriously gothic, but the night before the funeral his grandmother, who was his mother's mother, came to the house in floods of tears and said he must go, because he was the one scrap of her beloved daughter she had left, and only his presence at her side would get her through the terrible ordeal.
'That's unanswerable,' said Aunt Lyn to Benedict afterwards. 'I think you'll have to go. I'm really sorry about it. But it'll only be about an hour.'
'I'll sit by you and hold your hand if it'll help,' said Nina.
'I don't want anyone to hold my hand. I'll be all right,' said Benedict. After they went out, he tried on the black tie which Aunt Lyn had given him and which was what people wore to funerals. He put it on and stared at it in the mirror. The tie looked horrible and Benedict hated it. He hated everything and he wished he could do what Alice had done, and step through the mirror into another world. Alice only had to say, 'Let's pretend,' and her mirror had dissolved. The world in the looking glass sounded pretty scary, but Benedict thought any world, no matter how scary it was, would be better than this one.
He was about to turn away when something moved in the mirror's depths. Benedict looked back and his heart skipped a beat. Looking out of the mirror, straight at him, was a strange man. As he stared, the man smiled and Benedict glanced over his shoulder into the room, thinking someone had come in without him hearing. There had been people coming and going all day, vague relatives Benedict hardly knew, and friends of his parents. Some of them had come upstairs to tell him how sorry they were; this man must be another of them.
But the bedroom was empty and the door was closed. Benedict looked back at the mirror and this time his heart did more than skip a beat, it lurched and thumped hard against his ribs. The man was still there, standing very still, watching him.
Benedict was not exactly frightened, but he was confused. His mind felt as if it was opening up and as if thousands of brilliant lights were pouring into it. He could see the man clearly – he could see that he was about his father's age, and for a marvellous moment he thought it actually was his father. Supposing dad had come back, just to say goodbye? But even as he was thinking it, he knew it was not his father. It was someone who had very vivid blue eyes, and dark hair. Benedict could not see the whole of the man's face because he was standing slightly sideways, but he could see the remarkable eyes and he could see the man was wearing a dark coat with the collar partly turned up. Behind him was this bedroom, looking exactly as it did here, except for being the other way round.
But people did not live inside mirrors, not unless they were people in books. Might it be a dream? He took a tentative step closer to the mirror and he thought the man put out a hand to him. Benedict hesitated, wanting to put out his own hand, but fearful that he might feel the stranger's cold fingers close around it.
Then from downstairs came Aunt Lyn's voice, calling something about closing the bathroom window, and the man lifted a finger to his lips in a 'hush' gesture. Benedict glanced over his shoulder to the door, and when he looked back at the mirror, the man had vanished.
He did not know if he was relieved or upset, but he did not think he would tell anyone about the man. Aunt Lyn and Nina might think he was going mad – he might actually be going mad. In any case, it had probably not happened or, if it had, it was something to do with his beloved Alice from his book. He had never heard of people being able to call up the worlds that lived inside books, but that did not mean it could not be done. For all Benedict knew, it might be something people did quite often, but that nobody ever talked about. This was such a comforting thought that he felt better for the first time since the car crash.
Benedict had never been to a funeral before and he did not know what to expect. It was dreadful. His grandmother cried all through the service, and clung to his hand, and one of the aunts fainted halfway through and had to be taken outside and given brandy from somebody's flask. The three coffins stood in front of everyone – Benedict managed not to look at them because he was afraid the lids would not be on and he would see his parents' bodies all dead and mangled up from the crash.
The vicar read a piece from the Bible that said the dead did not die, only went to sleep. The thought of his parents sleeping inside a coffin deep in the ground was so terrifying Benedict was not sure if he could bear it. He bit his lip and stared at the ground and thought about all the worlds in books that he might escape to when this was over, and wondered if the man who had looked out of the mirror at him had been real or just part of the nightmare of his parents dying in a dreadful tangle of metal and glass on the Victoria Dock Road.
He thought he could go back to Aunt Lyn's house after the service, but it seemed everyone was going to his grandfather's old house, and Benedict had to go with them.
Aunt Lyn came with him in one of the big black cars. She was surprised he had never been to Holly Lodge. 'It was your grandfather's house,' she said. 'Are you sure your father never took you there?' 'No, never.' Benedict did not say his mother had suggested it once, but that his father had said, quickly, 'Benedict mustn't ever go to that house.'
'Why not?'
'You know why not.'
'Oh Lord, you don't think it's still there, do you? Not after all this time?'
Benedict, listening, only just caught his father's reply. 'Yes, it's still there,' he said. 'You've never really believed it, I know, but I promise you, it's still there.'
As the big black car slid through the streets Benedict looked through the windows, waiting for the moment when he would see the house, which his father had never wanted him to enter. I'm very sorry, he said silently to his father's memory. You didn't want me to go inside this house, but I'll have to.
Aunt Lyn was saying something about an inheritance. 'When you're twenty-one, Holly Lodge will be yours.'
It sounded as if she was promising him a huge treat, so Benedict said, 'Yes, I see,' even though he did not see at all. He was trying to pretend that the rain sliding down the car's windows was actually a thin silver curtain that he could draw aside and see sunshine beyond and his parents still alive and everything ordinary again.
But it was real rain, of course – a ceaseless grey downpour. When the cars drew up outside Holly Lodge it dripped from the dark gloomy trees surrounding the house and lay in black puddles on the gravel drive.
Benedict had not known what to expect from this house, but his father had talked about something being in there that he, Benedict, must never meet. Clearly it was something really bad, so it would not be surprising to find Holly Lodge looked like the terrible castles in Jack the Giant Killer, although he supposed you did not get many castles in East London and you certainly did not get any giants, or, if you did, people kept very quiet about them.
When they got to it, he saw it was an ordinary house in an ordinary street. But as they went inside, he had the feeling it had never been a happy house; he thought quite bad things might have happened here, or – what was worse – might be waiting to happen in the future. It was quite a big house, though, which was good because a lot of people were here. Aunt Lyn had arranged for tea or coffee and sherry to be offered, and people wandered around sipping their drinks, eyeing the furniture and the pictures and ornaments. It appeared that hardly anyone had been to the house before; aunts murmured that it was all in better condition than they would have expected; uncles peered dubiously at paintings, and a bookish cousin, with whom Nina tried unsuccessfully to flirt, discovered a collection of works on Irish folklore, and was seated on a window sill reading about creatures with unpronounceable names and sinister traditions, who had apparently haunted Ireland's west coast.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Sin Eater"
by .
Copyright © 2012 Sarah Rayne.
Excerpted by permission of Severn House Publishers Limited.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
