Dark Places: Fear of the Dark

The noise in the crowded cafe was such that conversation was difficult, as the two college seniors found a small table and plonked down their lunches. Outside, the early March sun was shining brightly between the buildings of Manhattan and the weather was beginning to show signs of Spring.

“So-o-o-o-o,” Honey began, twirling a strand of hair around her finger, and drawing the word out to its full potential, “do you have any plans for the weekend?”

Trixie looked up from her lunch with a puzzled frown. There was something about her friend’s demeanour that suggested nervousness. It seemed out of place when connected with such a commonplace question. She took a moment to finish her mouthful of chicken salad, as well as to give her answer a little thought.

“Nothing important,” she finally replied. “Some research for my Abnormal Psychology paper… maybe meet a few people for a game of touch football… my friend Phil’s band is playing Saturday night; I might go and see them.”

Honey drew a breath. “Would you consider…” Her voice trailed away.

“What?” Trixie asked gently, but with an edge of curiosity evident.

“I have to go away for the weekend, but I’m worried about it, and I thought maybe it would be better if you came with me, but if you’ve got plans then I won’t worry you, so don’t worry about it, okay?” she responded, the words bursting out in one continuous stream.

“You’re not worrying me, except by being worried,” Trixie assured her, setting down her fork. “Where are you going, and why are you so worried?”

Honey sighed and smoothed back her hair. “I have to stay at Grandmother Wheeler’s place for the weekend – not her regular place, which is nice and pleasant and comfortable, but her country house in Connecticut, which has been in her family for hundreds of years and is old and horrible and creepy.” She sighed once more. “I hate visiting, and I’ve always been terrified to stay the night. Mother usually comes up with a tactful reason why I can’t, but this time I really can’t get out of it, because there’s kind of a family meeting I have to be at.”

“But I couldn’t visit your grandmother with you, especially when there’s a family meeting,” Trixie reasoned. “Not even your mother could come up with a tactful reason for that!”

Her friend nodded vigorously. “She could, and she has, and she was the one who suggested you in the first place. You see, Jim will be going, but even though he’s my brother he won’t have to be at the meeting – it’s to do with some dry, old legal stuff that dates back way before he came into the family – so Grandmother suggested that he bring a friend along, and Jim’s bringing Brian, so Mother thought it would be nice for me to have a friend, too, and since Brian is your brother, it would be perfectly natural if you came as my friend and shared my room with me.”

“And your grandmother would approve of this scheme?” Trixie was a little sceptical. It seemed to her like too much of an intrusion on a private affair.

Honey waved the objection away. “There’ll be so many people there this weekend, Grandmother wouldn’t notice if I tried to smuggle in all the Bob-Whites. And the house is huge. No one will notice, or be upset, or anything. Promise.”

“Well, I can’t see why not, in that case,” Trixie decided. “Bring it on.”

For the rest of that week, whenever they chanced to speak to each other, the two continued to make plans for the trip. They decided to travel by train back to Sleepyside and from there onward in Honey’s car, leaving right after Trixie’s last class, and picking up a little dinner along the way. This plan was duly implemented and so the two arrived at the gates of the house around eight in the evening.

Honey pulled over just outside and rested her head on the wheel for a few moments. “Sorry,” she murmured. “I just need a moment before we go any further. I really hate arriving here in the dark.”

“It’s okay, Hon,” Trixie assured, although she could not yet see what the fuss was about. From her vantage point, there was nothing to be seen of the house. The tall brick wall topped with spikes which surrounded the property blocked all view.

Taking a steadying breath, Honey lifted her head and checked carefully for other vehicles. Seeing none, she slowly drove up to the security panel and keyed in the code. The wrought-iron gates swung open soundlessly and they proceeded inside, along a wide drive. Still, there was no sign of any building. Lush foliage of the tall evergreen hedges on both sides seemed designed for privacy. The drive swept around in a gentle curve and emerged onto a vast lawn. Brooding over the smooth expanse was a monstrous building. Trixie’s jaw dropped.

“It’s a bit much, isn’t it?” Honey commented, nervously. “I mean, the house, with all the lights shining up on it, and the huge lawn, and those horrible statues, and everything.”

Trixie had not, until then, noticed any statues. She tore her eyes away from the enormous building and glanced at a classical-style nude, with strategic fig-leaf and perfectly placed lighting, as it passed by her window. She gulped.

“Hon, that’s not a house,” she finally managed. “That’s big enough to hold a small town.”

“I told you it was huge,” Honey reminded her. “I told you that no one would really notice that you were with me.”

“Yes, but I thought you were exaggerating,” her friend muttered. “I thought, when you said it was old and creepy, that it’d be one of those Victorian houses with the tower, and probably a dead tree to scratch against the windows.”

Honey pulled up outside the front entranceway with a shrug. “So, it’s white, with lots of columns, and tall windows like dozens of eyes and those funny urn things on top. I didn’t really mean the outside was creepy. It’s the inside that’s the problem. Anyway, this is the front and Grandmother would rather starve than let this side look shabby. Just wait till you see what it’s like from behind.”

As they were speaking, the massive front doors had opened and a stiff-looking man approached. With a little jolt, Honey got out of the car and went to see about their luggage. “Good evening, Jenkins,” she greeted, as the man approached. “Mother let you know I was bringing a friend, didn’t she?”

Jenkins gave a nod and took an overnight bag in each hand. “You will be in the primrose suite. This way, please.”

The two young women followed along. Honey handed her keys to a smartly dressed young man, who was waiting nearby. She thanked him politely, calling him also by name. Once inside the grand residence, they crossed the large foyer, with its marble floors, to a pair of elegant staircases and ascended the one on the left. Upstairs, the house was neatly divided into two halves. On this side, two corridors led to the guest bedrooms.

“The other side is Grandmother’s Suite,” Honey whispered. “Mother and Daddy have a room over there, too, and Daddy’s sister and her husband. All of the grandchildren and the other, more distant, relatives have to stay over this side – we won’t be allowed up the other staircase.”

Trixie nodded comprehension, and tried to keep her bearings in a corridor which turned ninety degrees after each two or three doors. Up ahead, a window looked out over an inky landscape and the corridor took another right-hand turn. The butler opened a door on the right and ushered the pair inside a room whose walls were painted in the faintest tint of yellow imaginable. Setting down the two cases, he asked if there would be anything else. At Honey’s assurances that they needed nothing more, he left, closing the door softly behind himself.

Honey sank onto one of the two beds in the room and wrapped her arms around her body. She looked so disconsolate that Trixie abandoned her exploration of the room to comfort her.

“It’s not so bad,” she noted, awkwardly draping an arm around her friend. “This room’s okay, isn’t it? I mean, it’s not as nice as your one at home, but it’s not really spooky, or anything, is it?”

Without moving her head, Honey’s eyes swivelled towards Trixie. “Just wait ’til we turn out the light,” she whispered. “You’ll hear the air moving somewhere, but won’t be able to figure out where; there’ll be strange sounds, and sometimes I’ve seen strange lights and smelt strange, horrible smells.”

“Well, we’ll just have to keep the light on,” Trixie decided, with a nod. “We’ll be fine, Hon. If we feel scared, we’ll just have to get Jim and Brian to come and stay with us.” She paused, remembering the rabbit warren they had just passed through. “They are somewhere close by, aren’t they?”

Honey nodded, seeming to shake off her mood. “Just across the hall, maybe, or next door. Let’s go and find out. I don’t really feel like unpacking right now.”

Without a backward glance, Honey crossed the room and threw open the door. She tapped confidently on the opposite doorway. Trixie hung back a little, not knowing who to expect on the other side.

“Hi, Honey! I didn’t know you were here,” a handsome, red haired young man greeted. He stooped to kiss her cheek.

“Hi Luke,” she replied. “We just arrived.” Casually, she introduced her best friend. “My cousin,” she added, for Trixie’s benefit. “We were looking for Jim, but I guess I chose the wrong door.”

Luke pointed diagonally across the hallway. “You weren’t far wrong. I guess I’ll see you both at breakfast.” He gave Trixie a lingering look, before gently closing the door.

With a bounce in her step, Honey headed for the door to the room right next to hers. She tapped on it and called her brother’s name, along with Brian’s. In a moment, it was opened by the latter and the four Bob-Whites greeted each other enthusiastically.

“What time will it be happening?” Honey asked her brother, a little self-consciously.

Trixie’s eyes narrowed. “What time will what be happening?”

“Around ten,” Jim replied, avoiding Trixie’s eyes. “I didn’t think it would be really safe before then.”

“Fine.” His sister nodded. “Less than two hours, then.”

“What’s happening?” Trixie demanded of the siblings. They did not answer. “Well?”

Honey forced a smile. “We-e-e-e-ll, you know how I wasn’t feeling comfortable about coming here, and how I asked you to come with me to help me feel better, and how I said that no one would notice even if I tried to smuggle all of the Bob-Whites in?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’m sorry, but I didn’t really feel much better about coming here, even though you agreed to come with me, so I thought, hey, why don’t I smuggle in the rest of the Bob-Whites, to help keep my mind off what a horrible house this is and how I don’t want to be here at all, so I asked Jim to help me arrange it and now the rest of the Bob-Whites will be here in less than two hours.”

Trixie threw her arms around her friend. “Honey, you’re a genius. This is going to be so much fun! We haven’t had a real Bob-White trip in years.” She pulled back, puzzlement evident on her face. “How will they get in?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” Honey replied. “It looks like the house is set on huge grounds, but it’s mostly an illusion. My great-grandfather sold most of the land years and years ago, for about twice the amount it was worth. Behind those statues we were looking at, it’s less than twenty yards to the boundary – and the utility entrance.”

Jim took up the explanation. “At ten o’clock, Brian and I will go for a walk. We’ll go out a side door, which isn’t too far from here – you should familiarise yourself with it, in case of fire or other emergency. While we’re out, we’ll unlock the side gate and let in Mart, Dan and Di. They’re driving over from Mart’s place and they’ll leave the car just outside the gate. We lock the gate after them, we all come back in through the side door and return to these two rooms. With luck, we’ll make it through the entire sequence unseen.”

“And if not, we can always say that our friends called us, in trouble, and we offered them a room for the night, and gave them directions to get here,” Honey finished, triumphantly.

This plan was implemented at the appropriate time, with a slight alteration. In the end, all four Bob-Whites chose to go outside. Turning into the corridor right next to Honey and Trixie’s room, a narrow, winding staircase was revealed. At the bottom, Honey keyed the security code into a panel and allowed the group out into the grounds. A well-worn path led through the trees.

“See?” Honey whispered, as they moved rapidly towards the gate. “Nothing to it!”

Once more, she keyed in a code and the pedestrian gate opened. Outside were their three friends. Without a word, the newcomers darted inside and pulled the others into the shadow of a large evergreen.

“What is it?” Honey breathed, close to Di’s ear. “Is something wrong?”

“Something’s happening!” Di replied. “We saw people in the shadows; they’re climbing the wall!”

Honey let out a sigh. “Is that all? It’s just local teenagers. It’s a thing they do. Let’s get back inside the house. If they see us, it’ll give them a thrill; make them think they almost got caught.”

Without waiting for agreement, Honey led the way inside and up the stairs. Minutes later, they were secure inside Jim and Brian’s room. By this time, Trixie was bristling with curiosity.

“What was that all about?” she demanded. “Why did you bring us inside?”

Honey flipped the light switch, throwing the room into darkness. “Come to the window and you should be able to see.”

The group clustered around and looked out on the rear of the building. Below, three figures emerged from the shadows and darted across an open space. After a pause, they reappeared, much further across the grounds. Honey pointed as the little group blended into the darkness around a small structure, nestled in obscuring greenery.

“I guess you’d call it an urban myth,” Honey explained, softly. She drew the curtains, and someone turned the lights back on. “Kids around here come here as a dare. There’s a spooky story about my great-grandfather – the one who sold all the land – and a servant girl. Grandmother always said it was just spite, because the man who bought the place lost so much money in the deal.”

“Tell us the story,” Trixie asked, eyes shining.

Honey cast a nervous look at her brother. With a smile, he granted her unspoken plea and gave the details. “They say that Henry Preston was a cruel and unprincipled man – although, Dad remembers him as being even-tempered, with a well-developed sense of humour and a definite set of ethics of his own. He was a shrewd businessman, by all accounts, and not above making deals that left others in a precarious financial position, which might explain some of the story.”

“Yes, yes,” Trixie interrupted. “Enough of the facts; get on with the story!”

Jim shot her a glance, paused meaningfully and cleared his throat. As Trixie tapped her foot, the rest of her friends laughed.

“As I was saying,” Jim continued, “Henry had some attributes that others did not admire. The story goes that one of his other failings was uncontrollable lust. He supposedly fell in love with a young woman who worked here in the house, a Rosie Taylor. She was seventeen years old, with dark hair and blue eyes, a nice figure and a pretty face. Henry was in his seventies – which also can’t be true, since he died at age sixty-three.”

“So, what happened next?” Trixie demanded. “In the story,” she clarified, seeing another long explanation threatening on Jim’s lips.

“According to the story, he got her pregnant. She, of course, was very upset. It is said that she went into that little building over there – the Pleasance, it’s called – to meet her boyfriend, Jack Bishop. When she told him what had happened, he broke off the relationship and told her to leave. She then ran across to the house and up to the master bedroom, where she confronted Henry.”

There was a pause, as Jim carefully phrased the next part. “In the story, he then went into a violent rage and threw her out of the window, intending that to be her death. They say, however, that she did not die straight away, but dragged herself across to that building, begging Jack Bishop for help. He wasn’t there when she got there and her tears and her blood supposedly made white and red-brown stains on the stone floor there – tomorrow, you can go and see the place, and it’s true that the stones have strange marks, but they’re a completely natural phenomena.”

“Tell them about the other bit,” Honey prompted. “The reason why the kids come here.”

Jim frowned, slightly. “They say that forevermore, Rosie will haunt that building, and will grant the request of anyone whose name appears written in white and accompanied by a little pile of salt – for her tears. The idea is that the writing and the salt will mysteriously disappear by morning, telling the petitioner that their request has been heard.”

“Of course,” Honey concluded, in a firmer voice, “Grandmother has a part to play in that. She insists that there is someone responsible for checking there every morning, first thing, and cleaning off any messages that have appeared in the night. Dad keeps telling her she’s feeding the myth, but she says that she won’t stand for people defacing the property, and that if she leaves all this salt around the place it will damage the lawn.” She gave a shrug. “Luckily, most of the kids just use white chalk to write their names.”

Trixie’s face was alight with curiosity. “So, was there ever a Rosie, or a Jack Bishop?”

“Not exactly,” Honey hedged. “There was a girl by that name who worked here, but she definitely didn’t die here. She actually married a man called Jack Bishop and went away from here. And she couldn’t possibly have had an affair with my great-grandfather, since she only came here the year after he died.” She gave a little smile. “He didn’t really push anyone out of a window, either. The only record anyone can find of a death – or any sort of incident like that – happened in the 1870s, so at least two generations previously.”

“You mean, someone really did die here by being pushed out of a window?” Trixie asked, rather breathlessly.

Her best friend’s brittle confidence showed signs of disintegrating. “Yes,” she admitted. “Or, maybe, by accidentally falling. From the master bedroom.” Her gaze dropped. “It’s by way of being a skeleton in the family closet. Everyone said she was murdered, and a lot of people thought my great-great-great-grandfather – was that enough greats, Jim? – was responsible, but I don’t think anyone was ever charged. There just wasn’t any evidence, of any kind. If someone did kill her, they got away with it.”

“But the supposed haunting doesn’t make much sense, if that’s the real death that they’re talking about,” Jim pointed out, subtly changing the subject. “Dad told me that the Pleasance was built in 1936 by his grandfather and the stones were specially hewn for the purpose. As far as anyone can tell, there hasn’t been another structure at that spot since this house was built at the beginning of the nineteenth century.”

“Most of the staff here won’t go out that way at night, though,” Honey argued. “There’ve been too many times that they see the ghostly figure of a woman walking the grounds, or hear her crying. Sometimes people have heard voices in the house, too, or heard strange moans and scraping sounds.”

Trixie’s interest was piqued. “But that’s probably real, live, modern-day people searching for the ghost! Maybe there’s a way into the house that they’ve found, and they’re searching for evidence of the murder.”

“After all, you would, if you were a teenager living around here,” her brother Mart teased gently. “That’s a pretty good theory, Trix. From what you’ve told us, Honey, I’d say that’s pretty likely.” A thoughtful look crossed his face, and he asked, “Is that the whole story?”

Honey looked surprised. “I think so. Why?”

Mart shrugged. “Well, it seems to me that the teenagers around here are getting off pretty lightly. Most times, there’s some sort of threat, or inherent danger, attached to these rituals. At the very least, I’d suggest that there was another so-called ghost that they’re supposedly tempting.”

An impish smile appeared on Trixie’s face. “Do you think those teenagers are still here? Let’s go and try to catch them and find out!”

Immediately, Honey and Di shrank back from the idea. In a few moments of confusion, the group separated into those making the attempt and those staying behind. Trixie led the way, bouncing lightly down the stairs to the side door. Jim and Brian – as the only other legitimate guests – followed along behind.

“What, exactly, are you planning to do, Trixie?” her brother asked, as she keyed in the code and slipped out into the dark.

She shook her head, laid a finger against her lips and quietly slipped off the path and into the shrubbery. Moving softly, the three were soon positioned in the area where the intruders had been seen arriving. After a few minutes wait, soft voices could be heard approaching.

“I’m sure someone’s watching. Let’s get out of here!” the soft, female voice murmured, very close by.

Trixie’s hand darted out of the shadows and took hold of the girl’s arm, dragging her into their hiding place. “What do you think you’re doing here?” she asked, as her captive gasped in fright.

“Let me go!” the girl demanded, though still keeping her voice low. “Please!”

“We’re going,” a young male voice added, though he made no move to approach. Their companion was away, already scaling the wall. “We haven’t done any harm. Let her go.”

“And we won’t hurt you,” Trixie explained, in a low voice. “You answer my questions and we let you go, deal?”

“Yes,” the girl squeaked.

“First: you’re here about the ghost of Rosie Taylor, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” the girl repeated. “You write your name on the bench in that little hut over there, you leave her a pinch of salt and she… uh, helps you out.”

“She helps? How?”

“Well…” It was clear that the answer was somehow embarrassing. “Well, see, Rosie had trouble with men, like, the one she wanted dumped her, and the one she didn’t want f–”

“Okay, I get the idea. She helps with your love life, right? Getting the right boy to notice you and that sort of thing.”

“Yes,” the girl breathed, with relief. “Kind of.”

“And the other half of the story?” Trixie demanded, with a hint of menace in her voice.

The girl shuddered and swore under her breath. “You mean, the curse?”

“Tell me about the curse.”

“Old Henry Preston watches from his window, and if he sees you, he swoops down through the air and you’ll die on the spot.”

“Okay, now what about the secret entrance. How does that fit in?”

The girl groaned. “How did you know about that?” Her captor did not answer, so she continued. “For extra difficult cases, you’re supposed to give Rosie a little something extra. I’m not exactly sure what it is, but they say you’ll know what to do when you get there, but we couldn’t find the place.”

“You brought a diagram?” Trixie prompted, and barely made out the girl’s answering nod. “Give it to me, please.” Without protest, the girl did so.

“Thank you,” said Trixie, nicely. “By the way, have you told him?”

“Told… ? Told who?” The girl’s voice was filled with fear and dread.

“You know who I mean,” Trixie insisted. “Have you told him?”

“No,” the girl whispered, almost inaudibly.

Trixie released her arm. “You probably should. And see a doctor, too.” She gave the girl a little push. “Now get out of here, both of you. And don’t come back.”

Back inside a few minutes later, Jim asked, “What was all that about?”

Trixie shot him an incredulous look. “What do you think?”

Her brother laughed, but without much humour. “I guess it was the other half of the equation – not that she wanted attention from the right boy, but that she got pregnant by the wrong one. That must have been the part she was too embarrassed to tell.”

Jim, who was now in the lead, stopped on the stairs. “You’re not going to tell Honey about the other part, are you?”

“I’ll tone it down,” Trixie decided. “We’ll just say that your wish won’t come true if Henry Preston catches you – it’s partly true, at least.”

The other two nodded agreement and they continued upstairs. Di greeted them at the door, demanding to know what had happened.

“I gave them a fright,” Trixie admitted, with a grin. “After that, they’d tell me just about anything. Seems the kids around here are using Rosie as a problem pregnancy counselling service. The girl I caught wouldn’t admit it, but she thinks she’s pregnant.” She turned to her brother. “You were right, too, Mart. If Henry Preston catches you, you don’t get the help you’re after.”

Jim settled on one of the beds. “A more worrying aspect, though, is that the kids are using some sort of secret entrance. The ones tonight couldn’t find it, but probably others have – and will again, if we don’t do something to stop them.”

“Oh, I just knew I didn’t want to stay here,” Honey groaned. “I’m not crazy, after all!”

“We know you’re not,” Trixie soothed. “And you’ve been right in just about everything you’ve told me. There were real, genuine reasons why you wouldn’t want to stay in this house. It was your instincts that told you to keep away.”

“It might be a valuable resource if you developed some instincts like that, Trix,” Brian told her, with a perfectly straight face. “It’d certainly keep you out of trouble.”

His sister narrowed her eyes and glared at him until he laughed. “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” she added. Gathering her dignity in an exaggerated manner, she drew out the slip of paper. “So, here’s the diagram those kids brought with them – though, there might be something wrong with it, since they couldn’t find the right place.”

rough diagram of grounds

The group gathered around to see. After a moment, Honey took the scrap of paper and tried to reconstruct its meaning. “Hmm,” she mused. “This must be the place where they came in… and here is the Pleasance… over this side, it looks like the master bedroom is marked (but why the skull and crossbones?)… so, I guess that the secret entrance is supposed to be… on this side of the house? Does that make sense?”

“They don’t want your great-grandfather to see them,” Trixie reasoned, excitedly, “and it probably makes sense to them that if the master bedroom is at the other end of the house, the staff ones might be at this end. I bet none of them have ever been inside here, so they wouldn’t have the chance to explore and find out.”

“Actually,” Honey explained, “the staff bedrooms are right above here. Above Grandmother’s suite is the attic, I think, and maybe some of the storage areas and things. We’re not supposed to go up there, I know. In fact, we’re not supposed to go anywhere higher than this. All of the stairs to the next level have security doors, and the code is different.”

“So, the only way we’re getting up there is if we find the secret entrance,” Trixie noted. “Let’s look for it tomorrow, while the family meeting is going on.”

Honey paused for a moment, her brow creased as she thought. “I think that should be okay,” she finally decided. “The meeting’s in the library, so I don’t think there are any windows that look out this way.”

“There aren’t,” Jim confirmed. “It’s at the extreme far end of the building, looking out to the front and to the far side.”

“Is it settled, then?” Trixie asked.

There was a murmur of agreement, from which Di’s voice rose. “But we’ll wait for Honey to be free before we actually go inside, won’t we? We don’t want you to miss out, Hon.”

“I’m perfectly satisfied with missing out this time,” Honey assured her. “I don’t want to go inside.”

“I don’t think we’ll be able to go inside in the daytime anyway,” Brian added, sealing the argument. “Tomorrow’s mission is purely reconnaissance. If we choose to explore the area, we’ll do it under cover of darkness.”

“Which counts me right back in,” Honey moaned. “I just knew it would be something like that!”

The next morning, after a sumptuous breakfast for the invited guests – and a secret but still ample one for the others – Honey departed for her family meeting. Trixie checked outside to see that the coast was clear before the rest of the group headed outside. On consideration, Honey had decided it would be wisest if no one remained in the rooms, since various staff would be on that floor during the day. They emerged into the sunshine to find the visible part of the grounds deserted.

“So, where do we start looking?” Di asked, as Trixie studied the diagram.

“First, we count these divisions in the wall,” she replied, “and we stop at the fifth one.”

While the front of the building was decorated with columns, the rear was less ornate. At intervals, a plain section of the wall indicated structural elements underneath. The group moved quickly along the wide paved pathway adjacent to the building, counting as they went.

“What next?” Mart looked over his sister’s shoulder. “Ten paces away from the house?”

They each paced, and came up with six different distances. Jim, who had travelled furthest, had his foot against the side of an elevated flowerbed. Di was barely off the paving.

Trixie looked around herself in confusion. “Now what? It must be somewhere around here, but I don’t see where.”

A thoughtful look settled on Brian’s face. “I would guess,” he mused, “that there must be a concealed access panel somewhere around here. Is it possible that a patch of this turf is growing in a tray, with the panel hidden underneath?”

Jim dropped to his hands and knees and began to feel around. Soon, the whole group had joined him. A moment later, Mart hit paydirt. “It’s here,” he softly exclaimed. “I can feel the edges.” His fingers latched onto a loop, set deep under the level touched by mowers, and with a grunt he lifted it an inch or two.

“That’s it, all right,” Brian confirmed. “I can see a metal cover underneath. It has ‘Maintenance Hatch’ stencilled on it.”

“Well, I guess that’s it on this line of investigation until after dark,” Trixie noted, in disappointment. After a moment, the sparkle returned to her eyes. “Though, I have another idea for an angle. We just need to wait for Honey.”

Later that day, the two young women met in their room. Honey slumped on the bed and groaned. “Why did I have to be here?” she moaned, covering her eyes with her hands. “That has to have been the most boring couple of hours of my life! And I can’t really see what it has to do with me, either. I mean, so what if I’m potentially a beneficiary of something when about twenty of my relatives would have to die before I’d get any of it? If all of them died, I’d inherit more money than I’d know what to do with anyway!”

“Maybe they didn’t want you to feel left out?” Trixie guessed.

“Maybe they wanted me to suffer with them,” her best friend retorted.

There was a long pause, as the conversation stalled. When it resumed, Trixie had chosen a new topic. “So, Honey… about what you told us last night, how did you know that there hadn’t been another employee called Rosie Taylor?”

“Well, my great-great- however many greats-grandfather, who built this place had someone keep really detailed records, and his son carried on the tradition, and his son, and his son, and so on until the male line died out with Grandmother’s generation, and she kept up the tradition, and still does, so there’s a record of every single person who has been on the staff in this house since it was built.” She paused, to think. “Of course, I personally don’t know that it’s true, only that Grandmother had someone read through them all and she says that that person said that there was only the one, so I guess there’s still a little bit of doubt.”

“Can we see the records?” Trixie asked, excited. “Can we read them for ourselves?”

“We don’t have time!” Honey wailed. “I’m not going to stay here for weeks and weeks, reading through horrible old books filled with that funny old-fashioned writing. There’s dozens and dozens of books. This house is over two hundred years old!”

Trixie waved away the objection. “We don’t need to read all of them,” she explained. “Only the one when the woman fell out of the window. You didn’t tell us her name.”

“I don’t know her name.” She looked thoughtful for a moment. “I don’t know that Grandmother would want us to pry into that, either. We’d have to think of a good reason why we wanted that particular book.” Her brow furrowed, then cleared. “I’ve got it! I’ll tell her that I want to show you the books and you can choose a year at random – but you’ll have to say there’s something particularly interesting about that year.”

“I’ll think of something,” Trixie assured her. “But how will we introduce the subject?”

“That’s easy,” her friend replied. “In a few minutes, we’re expected downstairs for refreshments in the large reception room, which just happens to be in the same room as Grandmother has a display of her genealogy. I’ll show you the charts, you show a lot of interest in our family history, then I tell you about the records.”

“Then I tell you how much I’d like to see them, you ask your grandmother if that’s okay – and she, hopefully, says it is – and you ask me for a year. Then I give the year we want to see – what is it, by the way?”

“1874,” Honey decided, after a moment’s thought.

“And I come up with some sort of reason why 1874 is a fascinating year. Okay! Let’s go get those refreshments.”

The plan went exceptionally well. It seemed entirely natural for Honey to draw her friend’s attention to the detailed genealogy, and Trixie did not need to feign her interest. They needed no great effort to attract Mrs. Wheeler, Senior’s attention, either. On seeing her granddaughter examining the chart, she joined the conversation without prompt.

“I was just telling Trixie about all your household records,” Honey explained to her grandmother.

“They sound really interesting,” Trixie added. She waved a hand at the chart. “You must know so much about all of these people, how they lived and everything.”

“A good deal,” the older woman replied indulgently.

“Could we possibly, if it isn’t too much trouble, see some of them, please?” Honey asked, in the most deferential of tones. “It would be so interesting, wouldn’t it, Trixie? I mean, I’ve seen some of them before, of course, and I’ve always been interested–”

“Of course, dear,” Mrs. Wheeler, Senior replied, cutting off any further developments to the sentence. “Just ask the housekeeper – and make sure you tell her which volume you’d like to see.”

With that, she sailed off to speak to another family member, leaving Trixie and Honey to silently celebrate their success together. Fifteen minutes later, they had presented their request to the housekeeper and were waiting impatiently in the library for the woman to bring the book in question.

“I just hope there’s something in there that’s useful,” Honey murmured, more to pass the time than anything else. “It would be just our luck if I misremembered the year, or heard wrong in the first place, or something.”

The door opened, and a middle-aged woman entered with a large book. “Here you are, Miss Honey,” she said as she placed it on one of the tables. “Please let me know when you’re finished and I’ll return it.”

Honey thanked her and she left the room, closing the door behind her. The two pounced on the book.

“How do we find the right page?” Trixie asked, barely above a whisper. “Oh! Just look at all this? We’ll never find what we want!”

Page after page was filled with seemingly endless columns of numbers, the first of which simply carried forward from the previous page. Every so often, a written comment explained the termination of a record, but there appeared no clue as to whom they referred. To Trixie’s untutored eye, it made no sense at all.

“It won’t be that hard,” Honey told her. “At the beginning of each year, the old records stop and they start a new page. First, we find the beginning of 1874.” She carefully turned the yellowed pages until she found the correct one. “So, here is the list of employees at the beginning of that year and the order that they’re in tells us which line belongs to them… if we look through, we can find a comment for anyone who left during that year, and then we turn back and find out who they are.”

They carefully read all of the comments, page by page, until they found one which simply read ‘Deceased’. Since they were near the end of the year, Honey quickly checked that there was no other. Breathlessly, she then turned back to the list of employees. Honey gasped as she read the name, written in an almost-illegible hand: Rosamond Taylor.

“It’s her,” Trixie gasped. “It’s Rosie Taylor.” She left the table and began to pace. “The story the teenagers tell must have been more than one real story mixed together. Rosie Taylor, this Rosie Taylor, fell to her death from the window of the master bedroom. Whoever lived here at the time wasn’t interesting enough for the locals to remember him, so they substituted your great-grandfather, that someone around here had a grudge against.”

“That sounds right,” Honey agreed. “The grandchildren of the man who lost out in the deal still have a grudge, which they complain about at every opportunity!”

“The window story wasn’t romantic enough, I guess,” Trixie continued, “so someone combined it with something about a more recent Rosie Taylor.” She stopped pacing and thought for a moment. “You said that she worked here just after your great-grandfather died? And that she married a man with the same name as the man in the story?”

“That’s right.” Honey gave a firm nod.

“Just say she was pregnant at the time, and that there was some question about who the father was, even if it was just a malicious rumour…”

“Combine that with what we have already and it comes out almost exactly like the story the teenagers tell!” Honey finished. “Oh, Trixie! I think you’re right! That makes me feel so much better, to know where the story came from and how it must have developed. Maybe I’ll sleep a little better tonight.”

Trixie just shook her head and smiled. “You won’t.” Her voice dropped to the barest whisper. “Tonight, we’re going to search the secret entrance.”

Somewhere in the house, a clock had struck midnight when the seven left their rooms and exited the building. Moonlight illuminated the landscape, causing them to keep cautiously to the shadows, just like the teenagers they were copying. A few minutes later, they reached the hidden panel and set to work. By consensus, they did not speak as Jim and Brian lifted the turf panel and set it carefully on a nearby garden edge, so as not to mark the grass. The procedure was repeated by Mart and Dan with the metal panel.

Shielding the beam with her hand, Trixie shone her flashlight into the cavity, revealing a passageway tall enough to stand inside, liberally supplied with pipes and cables. A metal ladder was bolted to the wall. Without hesitating, she put her foot on the first rung.

“No,” Jim told her in a firm, but soft, voice. “We agreed.”

Trixie let out a sigh and allowed Jim to precede her. She tapped her foot as she waited for him to reach the bottom and to signal her that it was okay to follow. In a flash, she was down beside him, closely followed by all of the others save Brian and Dan, who had elected to stand guard. After a lot of indecision, Honey and Di had both chosen to go inside with the searchers, rather than stand in the grounds at night.

Once at the bottom of the shaft, their options became clear. They were at the corner of an L-shaped bend in the passage. One side turned towards the house, the other ran parallel to it. Trixie pointed to one wall with her flashlight, clearly showing a white chalked arrow along the former. Without having to stop and consult, they took that path.

Around ten paces later, the tunnel ended in a blank wall. A similar metal ladder to the first one led upwards into blackness. Once more, Jim went first, with Trixie running him a close second. The vertical space was less roomy than the first part of the tunnel had been, and the climbers needed to keep their elbows well-bent to avoid the masses of cables and pipes directly behind them.

Soon it became clear that they were inside the building. The ladder continued upwards. At regular intervals, Jim would pause and play his light around, looking for other ways out, but without success. The infrastructure that this small shaft carried wove in and out through small cavities, but none was large enough to enter.

Finally, as the climbers were beginning to despair of ever leaving the cramped conditions, the ladder emerged into another passageway. Unlike the first, which had been made of concrete and looked relatively recent, this passage was lined with old brickwork. It was also much lower, and all of them now needed to stoop. Underfoot, there was a definite path where human traffic had disturbed the dust.

Jim’s searching light made out another arrow, which pointed to the right. The searchers once more followed this guidance. After a short but intensely uncomfortable walk, they again reached a seeming dead end. Trixie and Jim each played a light around, searching for the way out. It was Trixie who located a tiny chalked arrow above their heads.

“What does it mean?” Jim wondered, looking upwards in the direction it pointed. It was true that the ceiling had opened up in the last few paces, so that both Trixie and Jim had more than ample headroom, but there did not appear to be anything above them. There was a break in the brick wall, but it looked to have another wall directly next to it.

“Give me a boost,” Trixie requested. Jim complied, and she soon had placed her hand just above the arrow. From that position, she easily climbed up until her foot was in the same place. A moment later, she disappeared from view. “Come over! You’ve just got to see this!” the others heard her say.

With varying levels of difficulty, her friends made the climb over the wall. On the other side was a tiny rectangular space – apparently a room used for sleeping at one time. It appeared, originally, to have had a conventional doorway, but this had been blocked off at some point. This side of the old entrance showed a wooden framework and the reverse side of a panel of wallboard. The furniture, such as it was, must have been in the room when it was boarded up. A bedframe, missing a mattress, was old and saggy. In the corner, the wardrobe had a definite lean, and its veneer was peeling off in strips. The broken dresser would never have been worth much. Now, it was covered with teenage pleas and tributes to a woman who had become a legend to them.

“This can’t have been her furniture,” Honey breathed, examining each in detail. “They’re not anywhere near old enough for the original Rosie Taylor, and I’m sure they’re too old for the later one.”

“What about that doorway?” Di asked. “When would that have been done?”

Jim leaned closer. “I think the wallboard is asbestos cement,” he decided. “Could be somewhere in the middle of last century. Say, nineteen-fifties, give or take a decade or two?”

“There’s a sheet of newspaper on top of the wardrobe that’s dated 1937,” Trixie observed, while standing on top of the bedframe. “It could have been there years before it was boarded up, though.” She bounded down to the floor with a series of bumps, causing each of the others to shush her urgently. Trixie shrugged and went over to the makeshift shrine. “Someone’s a good artist – with a good imagination.”

Two pictures were tucked into the frame of the peeling mirror, and seemed to have been there for some time. A beautiful, youthful face looked out from one picture. On the opposite side, a full-length view showed a slim girl, but with distinct curves. The other additions surrounded them, but were separated from them by a small margin. Just like the story that Jim had related, ‘Rosie Taylor’ had dark hair and blue eyes.

“So, you just add your petition here?” Di asked, reading a note or two of teenage angst.

Trixie pointed to one drawer of the dresser, which was marked in frayed red ribbon. With a tentative touch, she drew it open, then frowned. “I guess this is what the girl meant when she said you gave Rosie something extra for really hard cases. I wonder why they do this?” Inside the drawer, along with a pair of scissors, were a reasonable number of small locks of hair.

“It’s a little like witchcraft,” Jim noted. “Hair and nails giving power over someone. I wonder if there are witch-legends around here, too. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if this legend developed a witchcraft component sooner or later, now that I’ve seen this.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Di suggested. “This is just creepy.”

The return journey was a little easier, simply by way of knowing what was ahead – or below, as the case may be. In fifteen minutes, they were out in the open, breathing deeply of the cool, fresh night air.

“What happened?” Mart demanded. “Did you find it? What did you see?”

“We found it,” Trixie whispered, “but let’s get inside before we talk.”

The covers were carefully replaced and the group were well on their way back to the side door when a series of noises alerted them to the presence of another. Without a sound, they each slipped into the shadows to wait, hearts beating fast in their chests.

“If I catch any of you kids, it’ll be the law on you this time!” they heard a man mutter. “I know you’re around here somewhere.”

Thinking quickly, Jim grabbed Brian by the arm and stepped out into the light. “Is that you, Edward?” he asked. “It’s Jim Frayne and my friend, who’s staying here this weekend. I’m sorry if we startled you.”

“If you don’t mind my asking, what are you doing out here at this time of night?” the older man enquired. “I thought you were some of those teenagers we get around here. In fact, I’m almost sure I heard some of them getting into places they shouldn’t be.”

“You did?” Jim asked. “We saw some last night, through the window, and thought we’d try our hands at catching some in the act. We haven’t seen a soul tonight, though – until you came along. I thought, at first, you might be one of them.”

“Get along inside, if you don’t mind,” Edward told them. “I need to make sure that everything’s secure, and I can’t really do that with anyone standing by and watching, can I?”

Torn, Jim was forced to say, “I suppose not.” Reluctantly, he and Brian re-entered the house, leaving the rest of the group concealed in the near vicinity.

For twenty anxious minutes the two waited just inside the door, unwilling to go upstairs, but considering it unwise to go back outside. Finally, the sound came to them of the security panel being unlocked from the outside and the other five scurried in.

“I thought we’d never get here,” Honey breathed, as she leaned heavily against the wall. “Quick! Let’s get upstairs before anyone else sees us.”

Reaching the top of the stairs, however, she came almost face to face with a young woman she had never seen before. Her own look of shock was mirrored in the other’s face.

“I– I–” the other woman began, seeming unable to put a sentence together. “I’m here with Luke, right?”

Honey’s face cleared. “Oh, that’s okay, then,” she began to babble. “You won’t say anything, will you, seeing as you’re in the same boat as us, and if you said something then I could say something, only I know neither of us will say something, because that would get all of us in trouble or something.”

“That’s right, Honey,” Trixie agreed, giving her friend a push in the right direction. “Why don’t we just leave it at that?” When they were all safely inside, she asked, “Didn’t it occur to you that some of your relations, out of all the cousins and second-cousins once removed and whatever that are about the same age as us, might have had the same idea as you and smuggled in an extra guest or three?”

“No,” Honey admitted, “though, now I come to think of it, it’s pretty obvious. I bet there’s more around here somewhere.” She shook her head to clear it. “But, getting back to the matter at hand, what, exactly, did we get out of this whole schemozzle?”

Her friend paused to gather her thoughts. “Well, I think we know exactly what the teenagers around here have been doing on the property,” she decided, ticking the point off on her finger. “We know where they go, what they do there and how they get in. We know how the story evolved. As far as I can see, we only have two things left to do while we’re here.”

“I’m not going into any more secret places,” Honey insisted. “I don’t care what you do, just leave me out of the clandestine stuff!”

Trixie gave her a reassuring pat on the shoulder. “No more exploration. Promise.”

“Good,” Brian added with a shudder. “I think we’ve had enough close calls for one weekend already, and we still need to smuggle Dan, Mart and Di out again.”

“So, what are the two things?” Mart asked, eyeing his sister with curiosity.

She, in turn, cast a sheepish glance towards Honey. “The first, I guess, is to find out whether Honey’s great-great-great-grandfather really did push someone out a window.” As Honey cringed, she rushed on to the second point. “The other thing I’d really like to do is to change the legend, so the kids will stop bothering Honey’s grandmother.”

“And how do you propose to do that?” Dan asked.

Trixie’s eyes shone with mischief. “Well, first, I need to know the true story. If I’m going to do this, I’ll need all the facts I can get. It’s so long ago, though, I guess the only way we’re going to find out is for Honey to ask one of her relatives – do you think your Dad might tell you, Hon?”

She nodded in response. “He might, if he actually knows.”

“I’ve seen the kind of history your family keeps now. He’ll know – or, at least, be able to help us find out.” Trixie’s curls bounced as she gave a decisive nod. “Next, we need to find a way to redirect the legend. We can’t try to scare them out – that would only encourage more of them to come. We need to find a reason for them to not want to come… and I’ve got a couple of ideas on how to do that.”

After breakfast the following morning, Honey rather nervously approached her father with a view to asking Trixie’s question. She invited him to take a stroll with her around the grounds, to give them the maximum of privacy.

“I need to ask you, Dad,” she began, though hesitantly, “about a bit of family history. Being here… staying in the house… well, I just can’t stop thinking about that story I heard, about a girl falling from one of the windows, and the rumour that my great-great-great-grandfather pushed her, and I can’t help wondering whether he really did, and then, if I’m descended from someone who got away with murder.”

Matthew considered for a few moments. “You want to know the old family secrets,” he clarified. “I have been wondering when you would. I guess now’s as good a time as any.” He led her to a nearby bench and the two sat down. “It’s not a simple question. There are actually two answers that I could give you, and both of them are correct, in a sense.”

“It’s a yes or no question,” his daughter pointed out. “How can there be two answers?”

He smiled softly. “There’s a legal answer, and another one. In the legal sense, yes, you’re definitely descended from a man who murdered someone, but was never tried for his crime. There’s no doubt in my mind that Ambrose Preston deliberately killed Rosamond Taylor by throwing her out of a window.”

“And the other answer…”

“The other answer concerns Ambrose’s wife. When the incident occurred, Ambrose was engaged to be married. His fiancee – her name was Mary White – tried to break off the engagement, but her parents would not let her. It’s my opinion that she knew exactly what he had done, and why. The wedding went ahead, but family tradition has it that the marriage was never consummated.”

“But they had a son,” Honey objected. “We’re descended from that son.”

“She had a son. His father was listed as Ambrose Preston, because he was her husband. The real father was Ambrose’s half-brother, William Preston. So, in a genetic sense, you’re only very distantly related to a murderer – probably no closer than most people.”

“So he did get away with murder…” Honey murmurred.

“No,” her father disagreed. “Remember, the family knew what he had done. They arranged things so that Ambrose’s wife was living respectably, but having her children by another man. They allowed Ambrose enough time outside that people didn’t talk too much, but he spent the rest of his days under constant supervision, or locked up somewhere.” He watched her for a moment, deciding how much to tell. “There’s a room at the top of the house where he used to be locked away. After he died, it was used for storage for some time, then later reverted to a staff bedroom, but the room gained a reputation for being haunted. Things would move around in the night, the furniture would inexplicably break when no one was there, the occupants would have nightmares. The doorway was boarded up sometime before I was born.”

Honey stared at him, wide-eyed. “There really is a ghost story attached to this house?” She let out a long breath. “I thought I was being silly to not want to come here so much! I’m so glad that other people don’t like it here, too.”

He chuckled, and asked, “Is there anything else you wanted to know?”

“I don’t think so, thanks, Dad,” she replied. “But thank you for telling me the rest of it.”

“You’re welcome,” he told her. “One more thing, before you go: the next time you want to bring extra guests, perhaps it would be better to ask.”

Honey’s breath caught in her throat and she barely managed to say: “How did you know?”

Her father smiled. “Well, I was out for an early walk this morning and saw three familiar figures sneaking out through the side gate. But don’t worry too much, Honey; your secret’s safe with me.”

A few minutes later, she was seeking Trixie at full speed. Spotting her friend wandering aimlessly near the Pleasance, Honey turned her steps in that direction.

“Trix!” she called, beckoning. “You’ll never guess!”

“What is it?”

They met in the middle of a patch of lawn, far from potential listeners. “You were right: he did know all about it! He really did kill her, but he wasn’t really my great-whatever-grandfather – his wife knew he’d done it and she wouldn’t sleep with him, so her son was really his half-brother’s son, so I’m not descended from a murderer after all. Isn’t that great news?”

“I’m happy for you, Honey,” Trixie assured her. “What else?”

“Well!” Words failed Honey for a moment and she waved her hands helplessly. “You’ll never guess the real story of that room! The family knew he’d done it and they didn’t let him get away with murder – they kept him under a kind of house arrest for the rest of his life–”

“In that room?” Trixie’s eyes were wide. “You’re kidding!”

“No! And there’s more,” Honey squeaked. “After he died, other people using that room thought it was haunted – they’d get nightmares and things would move around and the furniture just broke when no one was there – so they boarded it up and forgot about it, and that must be the very same room that the teenagers are using as a shrine to his victim, because you wouldn’t think they’d board up two rooms, would you?”

“Oh, that’s… wonderful!” Trixie cried. “This gives me the best idea for how to stop this! We just need a reason… oh! I’ve got it. Come on. I need to check something.”

Taking Honey by the arm, she raced back inside the house, slowing to a more sedate pace on the doorstep. Soon, they reached the room where the genealogical chart was displayed. Trixie stopped short in front of it and scanned it intently.

“Here,” she pointed. “Ambrose Vincent Chauncey Preston, October 31, 1847 to March 15th, 1908. The hundredth anniversary is only a week or so away. We’ve got a lot to do and not a lot of time!”

The first part of Trixie’s rapidly developing plan involved gaining Honey’s grandmother’s permission. While the two were still debating the best way to achieve this, Honey’s father approached through the front door. At once, Trixie pounced.

“Mr. Wheeler!” she cried, rushing up to him. “You can help us. On Friday night, we saw some teenagers in the grounds looking for ghosts, so Honey told me the story, and about how much it annoys her grandmother and I’ve thought of a way to stop them, but we’d need her permission to do a few things. Do you think, maybe, you could ask her for us, please?”

“Well,” he considered, “that would depend on what you wanted to do.”

Trixie frowned, as she put her thoughts in order. “First, we’d need her permission to go into the secret passage they use. Next, we’d probably need the co-operation of the caretaker to tell us where it is. After that… well, I guess it would mean destroying anything that’s in there, so we’d need her permission for that, too.” She went on, quickly, “There wouldn’t be any damage to the building, or her reputation. I’m just planning on a mock-supernatural end to the story, so that there’s no point in their coming back.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Mr. Wheeler promised.

In her dorm-room a few days later, Trixie outlined the plan as it stood to her best friend. “I’ve started the internet rumour about something being about to happen there,” she noted, with a grin. “That was the easiest thing ever. All I had to do was post a message on a board, saying that my friend Stacy had gone to your grandmother’s place the other night and that ever since she’d had a real feeling of dread about it concerning the 15^th and ghostly fire. Oh, and I mentioned that she’d heard that it was the hundredth anniversary of the murderer’s death coming up and I wondered if it was that day.”

“What happened next?” Honey asked.

“Well, I’ve been keeping an eye on it,” she replied, “and the story’s growing already. It’s on a few different sites now – in various versions. At least three people have claimed they have proof that it is the hundredth anniversary.” She giggled. “I also posted as Stacy on one of the sites, confirming my story.”

“What else?”

“Well, I’ve got all of the supplies ready, and I’ve got Jim, Brian, Dan and Mart all prepared to help with the work, for at least some of the time. Di didn’t want to – I don’t suppose you want to, either?”

“No way,” Honey asserted. “I don’t ever want to go into a secret passage, or hidden tunnel, or secret room ever again!”

“Don’t say that!” her friend chastised. “Think of all the hidden places left in the world for us to explore.”

“I’d rather not, if you don’t mind.” Honey gave a meaningful look. “Anything else?”

Trixie shook her head. “We just have to wait until the day.”

The night before the hundredth anniversary, six of the seven Bob-Whites travelled once more to Mrs. Wheeler, Senior’s country place. Dan would be joining them at first light, since he was working nights that week. They arrived under cover of darkness and noted the differences from their previous stay. None of the family were in residence at this time, so the house was run by a skeleton staff. It had an unoccupied feeling and appearance.

“So, we set ourselves up where?” Di asked, a little squeakily. While unwilling to go inside the tunnel once more, she had been persuaded to make the voyage with them and lend other kinds of support.

“Across the hall from where we were last time,” Honey explained. “We can’t really use the same rooms because their windows face the wrong way. As it is, we’ll have to be really careful about showing lights.” She paused for a moment, at the foot of the grand staircase. “Though, we’ll store everything downstairs. Before we go up, I’ll show you all where.”

They entered a carefully concealed hallway through the working part of the building and emerged in a small, fairly bare room. The group split, with half carrying their personal belongings upstairs to the bedrooms and the rest stowing away the supplies. With everything in place, they went upstairs to talk for a few hours before bed. Tomorrow would be a long day.

Half an hour before dawn, Jim and the three Beldens rose, dressed and ate a hasty breakfast. With hardly a sound, they slipped out into the fading night with the few supplies they needed for the first part of the plan. They had reasoned that any unauthorised explorers would be well out of the way by this time, but there was still a risk that some were lingering and it was imperative to the plan that they enter and exit unseen. With this in the front of their minds, they sidled and crouched their way around shrubs and raised garden beds, moving ever nearer to their target.

They were almost there when a dark, menacing figure stepped out of the shadows and lunged at Trixie with a low growl. She gritted her teeth against the cry of surprise and fear that threatened to escape her lips and jumped out the way.

Once more, the figure lunged for her, but this time, Jim and Mart caught him by the arms. “Easy!” the figure said, in Dan’s voice. “It’s only me.”

Trixie thumped him, hard. “Don’t do that! You scared me.”

“That was kind of the idea,” he told her, with a soft, devilish laugh. “So, are we ready to go in?”

Once more, they lifted off the concealing turf and the metal panel. One by one, they entered the tunnel and made their way to the secret room. Mart led the way this time, since he had brought a camera to record their mission and wanted to take some shots before they started. Jim stayed outside in the tunnel, ready to accept items as they were passed over the top.

“I’ll pack up all this stuff,” Trixie decided, setting down a small cardboard box they had brought. She got to work, taking down the pictures, the letters and other tributes. The contents of the dresser drawers followed. Fitting the lid, she called out to Jim, and then passed it over the wall. Meanwhile, Brian and Mart had started dismantling the old wardrobe. Its drawers, and those of the dresser, were passed to Jim.

“I think I’d better start taking this stuff back to the entrance,” Jim called, as the last drawer was handed to him. “It’s getting rather crowded out here.”

“I’ll help,” Dan offered, quickly scaling the wall and dropping down on the other side. Soon, the sounds of their labours were evident.

Small, moveable articles having all been removed, Trixie settled to trying to remove the mirror from the dresser. “I still haven’t had an idea of what to do with this,” she mused, as she attacked its stays with a screwdriver. I don’t really want to break it, but it’s too big to take out and I can’t see how we can hide it.”

“Jim brought a glass cutter,” Brian mentioned. “If all else fails, we thought we’d cut it up and take it out in pieces. We’re hoping another idea will turn up, though.”

For the next few hours, the five worked steadily. The three in the secret room dismantled the wardrobe and dresser, while Jim and Dan set up a rough pulley system over the tall ladder and lowered items to the ground below.

At half-past seven, Honey and Di joined the group, carting items from the entrance back into the house. Pieces of wood began to emerge, along with the other items removed earlier. By mid-morning the little room was nearly bare, and by lunchtime all that remained were the mirror and the bedframe. The latter remained in place only because it was needed for something to stand on when climbing out.

Five weary workers left the tunnel for a break and something to eat. They had taken snacks and water bottles with them, but none had wanted to eat in the hot, cramped and dusty conditions. Carefully concealing the entrance once more, they went inside and cleaned off.

“Well, we’re almost done,” Trixie reported, when Honey asked. “We just need to get the mirror out somehow, and take the bed apart, then we’re on to the next stage.”

“Are you going to be done in time?” Honey enquired next.

Her brother nodded. “All going to schedule.”

Looking at the problem of the mirror with fresh eyes, the workers discovered that it could easily be concealed in a new location. With the five of them working together, they managed to lift it into the passageway and then lower it the cavity inside a nearby partition wall.

“It’ll be a good mystery for someone, if they ever take that wall out,” Jim noted, before returning to the task. “Trixie, Mart, Dan, why don’t you three go outside for a spell. Brian and I should be able to finish up here.”

“One more thing, before I go,” Trixie told him with an impish smile. She produced a small bag full of something intensely black and picked up another of grey powder, which she had stowed there earlier. “Soot,” she explained, “and ash. I won’t be a minute.”

With a practiced hand – for she had tried out the effect until it looked exactly right – Trixie scattered the two powders and applied them to the walls and other surfaces with various implements. Standing back to admire the effect, she caught sight of something and shuddered.

“It never did that when I practiced,” she noted. “It looks horrible.”

Jim peered over the wall and nodded. “It looks a lot like a face. A malevolent face.” He held out a hand to her. “Come on out, Trixie. We’ll get the barrier into place, and then you can come back and see it. There won’t be enough space with three of us.”

Reluctantly, she did as requested, slowly returning to the outside world. An hour later, Brian entered the house with a message: all of the work there was done, and any who wished to see it should come right away. The other five made their way through the now-familiar tunnel system and took turns at shining a flashlight into the hidden room.

“It looks great,” Trixie pronounced, as she lowered herself to the floor. “Are you sure they won’t be able to break in again?” In her absence, it seemed that partly-burnt beams had fallen across the opening, completely blocking human traffic into the room, but allowing a view of the scene below.

“I’d defy anyone to get in with less than an hour’s effort and a lot of noise,” Brian declared. “It may not look it, but it’s very firmly attached.”

“Well, if Mart’s taken the ‘after’ shots, I think that’s it until dusk,” Trixie told them. “This part has gone really well.”

As the sun sank over the western horizon, the group made their way into the town cemetery. An earlier reconnaissance had revealed the position of the two graves in question. First, they headed for that of Rosie Taylor. Weeds tangled around the headstone, almost obliterating it from sight. With an economy of movement, Jim took up a bladed implement and began slashing them down. As he finished, they were gathered up by others and carted away. Honey and Trixie set to work on the stone itself with a scrubbing brush and some soapy water.

Having made the area as presentable as possible, they set off for the Preston plots, and that of Ambrose Preston in particular. Here, there were no weeds and no disfiguring marks on the headstones. Trixie stood in front of the well-tended stone and gazed at it.

“I’m standing on the grave of someone who escaped justice,” she murmured, drawing out her bag of soot. Gently, delicately, she applied a few thin trails down the unblemished surface. “There. I think that’s enough – just the slightest suggestion of a link.”

Honey shivered. “I don’t know about anyone else, but I’d like to go and get something to eat – far away from here, and somewhere really… I don’t know… normal. I don’t want to even think about this place for a long time.”

“I guess so,” Trixie replied. As they reached their cars she added softly, “I still have another stage to my internet rumour campaign, but I don’t suppose you need to be in on that. And, of course, in a couple of weeks, the entrance to the tunnel is going to mysteriously disappear – your grandmother has that all arranged already.”

“Good!” Honey answered. “I am so over all this! I don’t think I want to go into any dark places ever again.”

This time, Trixie let the remark slide. She had a feeling that there might be other dark places in their future together.

A few weeks later, Trixie sat in front of a computer, checking a particular selection of sites. Her face broke into a wide smile, then she quietly laughed aloud. To all appearances, her scheme had worked. The legend had transformed, and attention had turned to the graves rather than the house. Two sets of online directions had been amended to say that there was no way to get to the secret room.

A shiver ran up her spine as she read an account of the eerie face that stared at visitors from the wall, before the access was cut off. Sometimes, the memory of it still visited her in her dreams. A few other touches puzzled her, and made her wonder where they had come from. Several sources insisted that they, personally, had visited Rosie Taylor’s grave and seen that flowers had come up in place of the weeds. In general, Trixie did not believe in wishful gardening; it seemed more likely that it was a romantic invention.

“What are you doing?” Honey’s approach had been so quiet that her voice made Trixie jump.

“Checking up on my rumour,” she replied. “It seems to be going well.”

“I have a message for you from the caretaker: he says that they didn’t get any unauthorised visitors last weekend at all – and that’s the first time that’s happened at this time of year for longer than he can remember! No one’s been inside the tunnel since they made the alterations, either. Grandmother, apparently, is quite pleased, and hopeful, too, that it’s finally almost over.”

“I hope so,” Trixie answered. “This has been so much fun! I think I’d like to do it again, sometime.”

Honey sighed noisily. “I wish you’d stop saying that! You make me think it might come true, and I don’t want to have to think about it ahead of time.”

Trixie laughed and swatted at her friend. “Okay, fine, I won’t talk about it. But just you wait and see, Honey. I’m sure there are more secret places for us to find.”