The Haunting Read online

  I thought of that day hiding away from everyone in the school cupboard when Jem had sobbed quietly in the dark and I’d pressed the Joan the Wad charm into his hand and told him I would always be his friend. It seemed like a long, long time ago now, and the thought of that day made me feel sad, made all my other friendships back home seem kind of feeble and false.

  As if reading my mind, Jem stood up and said, “Cool necklace.”

  My hand went to it instinctively. Perhaps I ought to take this moment to apologize for refusing to see him when he’d tried to visit me in the hospital, but I really didn’t want to talk about that day or what had happened.

  “Do you always wear it?” Jem asked.

  “Um, yes, most days.” I suddenly felt embarrassed about it and tucked the charm back under my top, then cleared my throat and said, “I thought I heard footsteps from the first floor just a moment ago.” I gestured over my shoulder at the Waterwitch. “Do you think there might be—?”

  “That was me,” Jem said at once. “I was just inside, checking the rooms upstairs. I came down through the back entrance. We must have just missed each other.”

  I frowned. “But … what were you doing in there?”

  “Your gran made me the caretaker,” Jem replied. He held up a bunch of keys and I saw they were an exact replica of my own. “When she decided to close down the inn and put it up for sale. I used to work in the restaurant here but now I come in a couple of times a week just to check the place and keep it clean.”

  “Oh. Gran never said. But last night I thought I saw a light in one of the windows. From my room.” I gestured at the Seagull across the street. “It was the middle of the night.”

  “Perhaps it was just a reflection from a street lamp,” Jem said. “Is that when you arrived? Last night?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long will you be staying?”

  “I’m not sure yet. A week? I came to see Gran because, you know, her health…”

  Jem nodded. “Are your parents with you?”

  “No. They wouldn’t come. I came by myself. With Bailey.”

  I didn’t really want to talk about the mess that was my family life so I said, “How’s Shell? She must be, what, fourteen now?”

  “She’s OK.”

  “Does she still think she’s a witch?”

  Jem grimaced and I knew that meant yes.

  “Well,” he said, “if you’re going to be here for half-term then perhaps we could go and get some fish and chips or something? If you want to, I mean.”

  “Yeah. That would be nice.” I hated how stiff and awkward my voice sounded.

  I scribbled down my number, thrust the piece of paper at him and then made some bizarre excuse about having to go and comb Bailey’s fur.

  “Sure, OK,” Jem said with a quizzical look. “I work in the restaurant at the Seagull, actually, so I’m sure I’ll see you around. Let me know when you want to get those fish and chips.” He smiled then and added, “My treat for all those sweets you used to buy me.”

  The smile made him look more like the boy I used to know and I felt myself relax just a fraction. “I will,” I said.

  Jem pointed at the Waterwitch and said, “I’m going back in for a moment. I just realized there’s something I forgot to do.”

  “OK. By the way, there’s something wrong with the cellar door,” I said. “It swung open by itself when I was in there before.”

  Jem went suddenly rigid, and then turned slowly back round to face me. “The cellar door?” he asked.

  “Yeah. I think the wood’s warped.”

  He was frowning. “The cellar door was open?”

  “Yes.” I looked at him, puzzled by his reaction.

  There was such an odd expression on his face that I wondered whether perhaps he didn’t like me mentioning such a thing to him – as if he were the hired help, only useful for patching up dodgy doors. Perhaps I should have stuck to the dog grooming line of conversation.

  “I’ll take a look,” he said eventually. “Thanks.”

  I’d definitely offended him. I shouldn’t have mentioned the door at all. What was wrong with me? I might just as well have told him that the toilets needed unblocking and the rat traps needed de-goring.

  Way to go, Emma, I thought to myself. You have managed to make a total mess of this conversation. Congratulations. You are an idiot.

  “I’ll text you later,” I promised, trying my best to sound like a friend and not like someone’s boss.

  Jem gave me another quick smile. “I’d like that.”

  I felt the sudden, almost overpowering urge to touch him – just to check that he was definitely there and OK and real. Something about that hollow look he had bothered me. Before I knew what I was doing, my hand was reaching out and I was resting my fingers against the sleeve of his jacket.

  “Hey, Jem?” I said. “Are you OK? I mean, really?”

  He twisted his arm and, at first, with a flash of hurt, I thought he was trying to pull away from me. Instead, he brought his hand up to mine and wrapped his fingers around my palm. I’d forgotten how warm Jem’s hands always were. A memory came back to me suddenly of watching the seafront fireworks display on New Year’s Eve when we were kids and making Jem hold my hands because they were cold. That was before the accident, before the wheelchair, before everything changed.

  Jem squeezed my fingers briefly before letting them go. “Never better,” he said, already turning towards the door. “I’ll see you around, Emma.”

  He disappeared into the Waterwitch, leaving me to stare at the door as it closed behind him.

  Chapter Seven

  Jem

  I locked the door of the Waterwitch and, for a long moment, just stood there in the dark restaurant, waiting for it to sink in. Emma was here, right here in Cornwall.

  She was in a wheelchair.

  Emma was in a wheelchair.

  God, it was like … like being punched in the gut. Actually, scratch that, I’d been punched in the gut, more than once, so I knew how that felt, and seeing Emma just now had been worse. I hoped I hadn’t let any of the horror I’d felt show on my face. I hoped I’d at least had the decency not to do that in front of her. Then I realized that, like the world’s most selfish moron, I hadn’t even asked her how she was. In my eagerness not to mention the wheelchair, I hadn’t asked her the most basic, important question of all. She’d even asked me if I was OK and I still hadn’t managed to remember how ordinary people had conversations with each other.

  Being hungry all the time seemed to be turning me into some kind of halfwit. I remembered what she’d said about the footsteps from the first floor and the candle in the window last night and I could feel the throb of a headache starting behind my eyes.

  I walked through the restaurant and out to the staircase. Shell was already there, standing on the top step like a pale ghost, her long fair hair reaching down almost to her waist, her eyes seeming too big in her thin face, the cast on her broken arm shining white in the darkness.

  “Emma Caine was just here!” she exclaimed, before I could say a word.

  “I know. I ran into her outside.”

  “The cellar door opened! It swung open all by itself!”

  “Emma told me,” I said. “She thinks the wood must have warped.”

  “Did you tell her that the door had been nailed shut?”

  I shook my head. “Shell, listen, what have I told you about candles after dark? Emma noticed you wandering around last night.”

  “I heard the woman,” Shell said. I could hear the stubbornness in her voice and my heart sank a little. The throb behind my eyes got worse, too. “I heard her down there again,” she said. “Laughing in the cellar.”

  “Shell,” I said, carefully keeping my voice completely level, “there is no one in the cellar.”

  “Well, how do you explain the door swinging open like that?” Shell asked. “Jem, you nailed it shut yourself!”

  I walked over to look at th
e door and saw that it was open, just a crack. When I grabbed the handle and pulled, it swung forwards easily in my hand. I had nailed it shut myself, when Emma’s gran had asked me to shortly after I started working at the Waterwitch. I’d used an entire packet of nails on it.

  Those nails were no longer embedded in the door, but scattered on the floor at my feet.

  I glanced up to where Shell was still leaning over the banisters and said, “All right, look, I won’t be cross, but just tell me the truth. Did you pull these nails out yourself?”

  “With what? My teeth?” Shell replied, startling me with a rare burst of sarcasm. “I didn’t touch them, Jem. They came out on their own.”

  I bent to pick up a nail and rolled it between my thumb and forefinger. Perhaps the wood warping had caused the nails to fall out…

  “There is something down there in the cellar,” Shell said above me. “I know there is.”

  I let the nail fall from my hand to roll across the floor at my feet.

  Suddenly, I felt the urge to close my eyes and lean my head against the cool, inviting wood of the door. Just for a moment. Just for a moment of total quiet, with no witches, or birds, or laughing cellar people, or nightmares or whatever other demons might be lurking in Shell’s head. For the hundredth time, I wondered if I’d done the right thing in bringing her here. But she couldn’t go back to Dad. She couldn’t ever go back to him again.

  I turned away from the door because I was afraid if I kept looking at it then I really might close my eyes and lean against it, and that was something I couldn’t do in front of Shell.

  I walked around to the foot of the staircase and looked up at her. “Come on,” I said. “Come down here and have something to eat.”

  She joined me and we went through to the kitchen together, where I made her a sandwich with the last of the bread and cheese.

  “Aren’t you having anything?” she asked when I put the food in front of her.

  I closed the door on the empty fridge.

  “I already ate,” I lied. My hands were shaking slightly so I shoved them into my pockets. “I’m not hungry.”

  Chapter Eight

  Emma

  After leaving the Waterwitch, Bailey and I set off to wander around the cobbled streets and soon came across the ancient, crooked old building that was Looe Museum. The sign outside read: The Looe Museum of Smuggling and Shipwrecks. I’d been inside before, years ago, but I didn’t remember it that well and I still had a few hours to kill before I could go and see Gran. Thinking that there might be some stuff in there about the Waterwitch, I paid the entrance fee and wheeled myself in. Between what Gran had said about the inn being haunted, and that weird experience with the staircase and the door, I suddenly felt the desire to look into the history of the place a little bit more for myself.

  A man sat behind a small desk with words printed in an old-fashioned curling script on the wall behind him:

  From Pentire Point to harbour light, a watery grave by day or night.

  And, underneath, was a placard saying that around six thousand ships had been wrecked off the Cornish coast. The man behind the desk seemed almost surprised to see me and I guessed they didn’t get that many visitors at this time of year.

  “You came just in time,” he said. “We’re closing for the season tomorrow.”

  The desk was a little high for me to reach so I passed the money over to Bailey who jumped up at the desk to pay our entrance fee.

  “He’s my assistance dog,” I explained. “Is it OK for him to come in with me?”

  “Sure, sure.” The man waved us through.

  The building seemed almost as ancient as the Waterwitch itself. Everything was sloping and crooked and musty, and the wooden floorboards creaked loudly as my wheelchair moved across them. Bailey and I seemed to have the entire place to ourselves. The exhibitions were all pretty old, and didn’t look as if they’d been updated in years. I passed through a First World War section that told of how strange lights had been seen off the Cornish coast during the war, and that these were said to be flashed by a Cornishman who’d drowned when his ship had been sunk by a German submarine. Like the wreckers of days-gone-by who’d used lamps to lure unsuspecting ships to their doom on the rocks, the phantom lights of the dead Cornishman were supposed to bring destruction only to German ships and submarines.

  I wheeled myself along, hoping to find some information about the Waterwitch. Since she was Looe’s most famous ship, as well as Looe’s most famous haunted inn, I thought they were bound to have something there about it. I wasn’t disappointed. Right at the back of the building, there was an entire Waterwitch-themed section. I skimmed over the stuff I already knew about Christian Slade and read about what happened to the ship after his death.

  While it was still being built, some of the sailors reported that they’d seen the female figurehead move. They’d glance back at her only to find that her head was turned the other way, or that her mouth was suddenly open, as if she was about to say something. Then there was another death when a worker fell from the rigging and broke his neck. People started to say that the ship was cursed.

  After it was finished, the Waterwitch sat in the dockyard for a year because no crew wanted to sail her. But it had cost £4,000 to build, which had been a fortune back then, so the brand-new ship wasn’t going to be set aside over superstitions forever.

  The Waterwitch set out on its maiden voyage in 1578 and the stories began soon afterwards. The crew reported seeing a strange woman on board. She’d frequently be spotted at night, on the gun deck or one of the open upper decks. The crew were all men, of course, because it was supposed to be bad luck to have a woman on board. Really, it seemed to me that these sailors had a never-ending list of things that were considered bad luck on a ship. It was amazing they ever managed to get anywhere.

  But it wasn’t just the common sailors who saw her. Some of the senior mariners saw her, too. There were conflicting stories about what she looked like but most of them never seemed to see her face. Some didn’t see her at all but claimed to have heard her laughing.

  When the ship docked at Plymouth, some of the crew were so spooked by the phantom woman that they refused to get back on board and new sailors had to be found before the ship could continue.

  Not long into the next voyage, one of the nineteen-year-old seamen claimed to have seen the woman but, unusually, he said he had actually seen her face.

  Once you see the witch, there’s no going back, the placard read. Once you see her face, it’s over.

  He refused to describe what she had looked like and then, a few days later, he tried to jump overboard. When his crewmembers stopped him, he went on a rampage with a musket and shot a whole load of people. Shot them dead, right there on deck, staining the boards with blood and brain splatter. Finally, they managed to wrestle the gun away from him and locked him up. Everyone said he’d gone mad. It was a horrible, blood-soaked history and I thought it was no wonder that people thought the Waterwitch Inn was haunted if it had been built with the timber of such an ill-fated ship.

  The poor nineteen-year-old was found dead in his cell a little while later. The accounts were vague about what he’d actually died of but it was thought likely that one of the crew might have killed him, in revenge for the other men who had died during the shooting.

  Perhaps that would have been the end of the matter if it hadn’t been for the faces in the water. As the Waterwitch sailed towards its next port, the surviving crew reported seeing the faces of their dead shipmates forming in the wake of the ship and the surf that ran alongside it. The faces would appear in the swirling foam for only a moment or two before disappearing, but everyone saw them, or thought they did, even the captain.

  At the next port, the entire crew abandoned the ship. The captain refused to set foot on her again and wrote a letter to the admiral of the fleet stating that the Waterwitch was a doomed, evil ship and ought to be permanently decommissioned for the sake of common decency.


  For another few years it sat in the harbour, not going anywhere and generally creeping out the dockhands, some of whom reported hearing a woman laughing on the boat in the dead of night. I went on to the next placard and read that, eventually, another crew was found for the Waterwitch, this time with a no-nonsense captain with decades of experience and a zero-tolerance policy for ghosts, ghouls, phantom women or bloody rampages. He’d hand-picked his crew to make sure they weren’t prone to wild superstitions, either. And, because he didn’t believe in bad luck, the captain even ordered the ship’s name to be changed. It was no longer to be called the Waterwitch, but was to be known as something else instead. There was no record of the new name – it seemed to have got lost somewhere in all the history books.

  Although the captain ordered the ship’s name to be changed without a second thought, the dockhands weren’t quite so happy to court bad luck in this way and no one wanted to be the one to go and paint over the Waterwitch name. The first man who agreed to do it somehow got caught up in the ropes of the platform and ended up hanging himself. The second man managed to finish the job but came back saying there was something wrong with the figurehead, and that nothing would possess him to ever go back on to that ship.

  In 1582, the newly christened ship set out on its last-ever voyage and promptly vanished, not to be seen or heard from again until it was discovered drifting deserted in the mist two years later…

  The sound of footsteps made me look round in surprise. I hadn’t seen another soul in the museum while I’d been there, but it was only the man from the front desk.

  “Just wanted to let you know that we’re closing in five minutes,” he said. “Did you see everything you wanted to see?”

  “Yes,” I said. “It was mainly the Waterwitch stuff I was interested in. My grandmother owns the inn.”

  “Wouldn’t catch me staying at that place,” the man grunted.

  “Why not?”

  “Too many stories,” he said. “I never used to take much notice until a friend of mine stayed there one time. Not the superstitious type at all, even though he was a fisherman. Never believed in bad omens or ghosts or anything like that. He was supposed to be staying at the Waterwitch for a week but, the first night, he checked himself out at 3 a.m. Came knocking on my door wanting a bed for a night.”