5
The Face in the Wall
“Dear Mum…” Bryony shuddered, and pulled the sleeping bag tighter around her shoulders as she started writing. “We have just moved to our new home. It’s called Wychetts and is very…” She thought hard about her choice of word. “Old. Dad says it was built over five hundred years ago, and is of special historic interest. It’s certainly historic, but I wouldn’t call it interesting. The whole place stinks of mouldy mushrooms, and is falling to bits. There’s no electricity, so I’m writing this letter by candlelight.”
Bryony glanced at the candle, which was wedged crookedly into an old bottle. The flame guttered as a cold draft wafted through a crack in the wall.
At night, Wychetts was even spookier than the day. There were lots of strange creaky-groany noises, and it seemed as though the house was alive.
“This place gives me the creeps,” she wrote, shuddering again. “It could be haunted, but I don’t think any self respecting ghost would be seen dead in a dump like this.”
She frowned, and struck a line through the last sentence. Ghosts were supposed to be dead already, so it didn’t really make sense.
Bryony found herself thinking of entombed skeletons. Deciding it was better to focus on her letter, she hurriedly put pen to paper again.
“When we got here, I was attacked by a cat.” Bryony studied the wound on her hand. “It has healed quite well, but is still a little sore. Anyhow, things got worse. There was a mix up with the removal men. Dad (surprise-surprise!) gave them the wrong directions, and they ended up getting lost. When they eventually turned up, they found out they couldn’t fit anything through the front door. The removal men just cleared off and left everything in the garden. We haven’t got any beds, so I’m sleeping on the floor instead. And what’s worse, I’m having to share a room with…”
Something stirred next to her, and a bony elbow dug into her ribcage.
“Ow!” shrieked Bryony. “Watch it, will you?”
Edwin’s ginger head emerged from his sleeping bag. “It’s not my fault. You’re taking up too much room.”
“I need more room than you,” said Bryony.
Edwin chuckled. “You can say that again.”
Bryony gasped. “Are you saying I’m fat?”
“Not all of you. Just your bottom, and everything attached to it.”
Bryony clenched her teeth. “My bottom’s not half as fat as your lip will be if you don’t get out of my face.”
“I wouldn’t go anywhere near your face,” spat Edwin. “Even if I could work out which end of you it is.”
Bryony couldn’t think of a suitable rejoinder, so rolled on her side and turned her attention back to the letter.
Writing letters to Mum was a great source of comfort to Bryony. She wrote at least five times a week, and told Mum every little detail of her life: every bad hair day, every boy who even glanced in her direction, every time Dad made a fool of himself (which was pretty often these days), and everything and anything else she thought Mum should know.
If only she had Mum’s address, then she could actually get round to sending them.
But Dad wouldn’t tell her, no matter how she begged him. He said he didn’t know, but Bryony could tell he was lying.
“I miss you,” she wrote, dabbing her watery eyes with her sleeping bag. “I hope you are keeping well, and…”
“It’s your mum, isn’t it?”
Bryony glanced round to see Edwin staring at her from the folds of his sleeping bag.
“You’re writing a letter to your mum, aren’t you?”
“Might be.” Bryony shrugged. “Don’t see what it has to do with you.”
“Do you see her much?”
“All the time.”
Edwin looked doubtful. “That’s not what I reckon. I reckon you haven’t seen or heard from her for ages. I reckon you don’t even know where she lives.”
“Of course I know where she lives. She lives in America.”
“But you don’t know her address, do you?”
“I know her address,” lied Byrony. “Anyway, you don’t know anything about my mum.”
“I know more than you think,” said Edwin. “I know she ran off with the office cleaner.”
“That’s not true,” snarled Bryony. “He was a Hygienic Cleansing Executive.”
“That was three years ago, wasn’t it?”
Bryony was enraged. How dare Jane tell her weedy little son all about Mum? And how dare Dad tell Jane in the first place!
Another blast of cold air blew through the room. Edwin’s grin vanished as the candle flame flickered.
“Go back to sleep,” grumbled Bryony, moving the candle to a more sheltered position in the corner.
“Put it back,” said Edwin, as the light faded from his half of the room.
“No,” said Bryony.
Suddenly, and for no apparent reason, Edwin started screaming. “Put the candle back!”
Now Bryony realised what this was all about.
“You are scared of the dark! That’s why you freaked out when Dad said there was no electricity.”
Edwin stared back at her, his wide eyes reflecting the candlelight, and making him look like a zombie.
“Just put it back,” he whispered. “Then I’ll let you write your letter in peace.”
Bryony laughed scornfully. “Tell you what, I don’t think I’ll bother writing my letter anymore. Think I’ll just go to sleep instead.” She lifted the candle, and pursed her lips as if to blow. “Don’t need this anymore then, do we?”
“Don’t!” screamed Edwin. “Please don’t!”
Bryony revelled in the boy’s fear. “You’re pathetic. Just like your mum. No wonder your dad walked out on the pair of you.”
“He didn’t walk out,” mewled Edwin. “It wasn’t like that.”
Bryony had always been curious about Edwin’s father. Dad wouldn’t speak about it, even though she’d asked repeatedly.
“Tell me what happened,” she ordered. “Or I’ll blow out the candle.”
Edwin shook his head. “I can’t…”
Bryony took a deep breath, and was about to plunge the room into darkness when Edwin lunged and wrenched the candle from her grasp.
But Bryony wouldn’t surrender without a fight, and threw herself at Edwin, knocking the candle from his hand. The flame flared brightly as the bottle rolled across the bare wooden floor.
Encased in their sleeping bags, Bryony and Edwin squirmed towards the escaping candle. Bryony got there first. Desperate, Edwin threw himself on top of her.
There was a loud, piercing crack. Bryony wondered if she’d broken an arm or a leg. Then there was another crack, louder this time. Then a splitting noise, followed by a low rumble.
Then Bryony was falling.
Edwin clung to her, screaming as they careered downwards in an avalanche of shattered wood and plaster.
Their fall was short, ending abruptly when their knotted sleeping bags snagged on a jagged ceiling beam, and leaving them dangling inches above the floor.
Bryony hung there for a few moments, stunned. Then she heard a soft whimpering in her ear. It was Edwin, clinging to her like a frightened baby.
“What happened?” he whined.
“The floor collapsed,” said Bryony, shaking dust from her hair.
“Where are we?”
Bryony gazed around her. A beam of moonlight shone through the glassless window, illuminating their surroundings.
“Looks like the lounge,” she muttered, extricating herself from her sleeping bag and dropping to the floor.
Edwin did likewise, with slightly more of a struggle, and then gazed upwards at a large hole in the ceiling. “The floorboards must have been rotten.”
“This whole place is rotten,” reflected Bryony. “We’re lucky we weren’t killed.”
Bryony’s relief turned to terror when she heard a sharp splintering noise from above.
A hefty ceiling beam sheared in two. One end came swinging down, missing Bryony’s head by inches before slamming into the end wall and cracking the stonework.
Bryony caught her breath, and waited for her heartbeat to calm before speaking. “This is all your fault. Wait till I tell Dad.”
“You can’t blame me,” wailed Edwin. “It wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t messed about with the candle.”
He grabbed hold of her again, and Bryony could feel that he was trembling.
But then she realised it wasn’t just Edwin that was trembling. The whole house seemed to be shaking…
A low rumble sounded. Bryony wondered if it was an earthquake. The cracked stone wall was bulging, and then the slabs started to crumble, dissolving tier by tier to reveal dark emptiness beyond.
But it wasn’t empty. Bryony could see something in there. Something that looked like…
A face?
Intrigued, Bryony pushed Edwin away and walked cautiously towards the hole in the wall. It was hard to see in the dark, but as she drew closer she realised it was a face. But not a human one. Well, not entirely.
The features were bizarre and bestial: a cross between an animal and a man.
“It’s a monster!” shrieked Edwin, still huddled on the floor in his sleeping bag.
“Don’t be dumb,” said Bryony. “It’s just some sort of carving.”
She got to within a stride of the face, and lifted her hand to touch it. Her fingers were millimetres away when it happened.
The face’s mouth creased into a hideous smile, revealing rows of jagged teeth.
Then its eyes flickered open, swivelling to fix Bryony with a cold, malevolent stare…