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.‘But they are not all here.Perhaps among the loose ones…’‘Thank you.’ I decided that Rosita was only doing her job, and softened a little.‘I don’t want to disturb anything in the rooms, I’m not going to modernise them, I just need to see inside.’None of the keys were labelled.As I was determined not to have her trailing behind me with a disapproving expression, it became a painstaking matter of trial and error to get any of the doors open.There was no point in trying the door in the drawing room, as it had the chest of drawers holding it shut, so I headed up to the first floor landing and the elegantly carved art nouveau door.It took over half an hour of fiddling with various loose keys, pressing and testing each bit against the tumblers in the keyhole, before I felt one turn over and unlock.According to Rosita, the key did not exist.I carefully pushed open the door.A spear of light bounced from a mirror on the other side and sloshed into the room, as if someone had thrown yellow paint across the floor.The air was dusty and thick – there were no open windows, doors or grilles on this side.I breathed in.The room smelled old and unlived in, of camphor and dried lavender and damp.The dust was so thick that the patterns on the carpets and tablecloths had been lost.Small grey clouds formed behind me as I walked.But it was perfect.Mateo’s wine racks could sit in here.I imagined them filled with rare amontillados.The room was a copy of the one on the sunlit side, as I had suspected, just much smaller and meaner-looking, the wood cheap and far less solid, a room probably deemed ideal for servants.It was disappointing to find no secrets or surprises.I felt an old familiar sensation stirring, something I hadn’t felt in a long time.I knew I was testing myself by stepping into the shadows.It’s a strange thing, nyctophobia.You’re not born with it.It can start at any time.It comes and goes, and it’s one of the only phobias you can transmit to other people.But it can also disappear without warning.My horror of the dark lasted for just over a year.During that time I couldn’t even step outside the house at night, and in London it doesn’t even get properly dark.Then one day I awoke to find that the feeling had gone.The answer now was to leave the door ajar, admitting a shaft of reflected light that provided me with a path I could stay on.I wanted to go further and dig around in the drawers of the desks and dressers, but something stopped me.It was enough for now.I could see that nothing had disturbed the dust.Retreating, I was pleased to leave the room and lock it again.I repeated the exercise in each of the rooms.In every one I could open, I found the same interiors, the same tables and chairs, but cheap ornaments stood on the sideboards and the mirrors were spotted and ruined.It was as if one half of the house had been cloned from the other, but its twin was smaller, sicklier, shabbier, designed to suit the second-class status of service.These meaner rooms seemed newer in some indefinable way, as if copied at a later date.In the servants’ dining room, there was one difference.On the table where the meals would have been laid out there was a doll collection, the dusty figurines arranged in order of height.Seven ugly, puffy-faced dolls, probably Edwardian, corseted in adult clothes, with movable eyes and dry plugs of real hair.There was no match for them on our side, and I assumed they had once belonged to the waiting staff.I didn’t touch them for fear that they would fall apart in the desiccated atmosphere.There was an odd smell here, of a bitter vinegary herb, something I couldn’t quite recognise.The only door I couldn’t get open was the one that connected to the drawing room.The chest of drawers had been pushed hard against it, and was too heavy for me to budge.I knew the rooms had to be connected between themselves, otherwise the servants would not have been able to get up to their bedrooms or reach the toilets, but there was no space between the house and the cliff-face for proper staircases, and I didn’t fancy creeping about the mean little passages and dark stairs that had to be back there without Mateo, so I decided to wait until he was home.‘Senora Delgadillo, who did you work for before we arrived?’ I asked the housekeeper when I went to return the keys to the cigar box.‘I was employed by various members of the Condemaine family,’ she said, ‘until the last one had to leave and the property was sold to Senor Torres.’‘So it always remained in the same hands?’‘Yes, until there were none of them left.’‘Did they die in the house?’‘Sometimes.’‘Have there been – tragedies – here?’‘No.Never.This is a happy house.It always was.’‘No-one else can get into the other side, can they?’‘Of course not.’‘So we are alone.’Rosita turned to me with her customary impatience.‘Senora Torres, if you wish to ask me something, please be clear and say it.’‘It’s just that I thought I heard someone moving about in one of the other rooms.’‘I told you.Hyperion is an unusual house.You must expect unusual things.The cliff behind it heats up during the day and cools at night.There are bound to be noises.’Which was entirely unhelpful, and pretty much what I had expected her to say.The wood was old and expanded in the warmth, so it cracked and popped.What else could there be, the suffering ghosts of those who had lived here before? I wasn’t living out some movie in which the heroine finds that the previous owner was a mass murderer, or that his wife was a witch who’d placed a curse on all future residents.It was embarrassing to even think about such things.‘But the room that connects to the drawing room has a chest of drawers wedging it shut.Who put it there?’‘I never go back there, Senora, so I would not know.’‘Nevertheless, someone has put it in place for a reason.Can you think what that might be?’Rosita sighed.‘I think perhaps that lock does not work.It is to stop the door opening by itself
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Tematy
IndexChristine Amsden [Cassie Scot Cassie Scot ParaNormal Detecti
Christie Craig [Divorced, Des Divorced, Desperate
Moore Christopher Ssij, mała, ssij (II)
Stasheff, Christopher Wizard in Rhyme 6 Haunted Wizard
Christine Feehan Mroczna Seri Mroczny Demon
Cidney Swanson [Saving Mars Saving Mars (epub)
Stasheff, Christopher Rogue Wizard 04 A Wizard in Peace
Feehan Christine Mroczna Seria 01 Mroczny Ksišże
Stasheff, Christopher Warlock 01 The Warlock in Spite of Himself
Christine Feehan Mroczna Seria 13 Mroczne Przeznaczenie