The Skeleton Key Read online

  I pulled my gaze from the cobwebbed chandelier and started across the lobby tiles towards the lift.

  And stopped.

  I was not alone. The woman in black was right in front of me, looking at me.

  Or at least her black, featureless head was pointed in my direction. The black crepe widow’s veil covered her head so completely that I could not see her expression at all, let alone whether or not she had a face. (I’d made that mistake before, communicating with other departed folks. It was best not to assume anything.) She was carrying the strange candle again and she turned and began walking away from me, her delicate laced boots moving silently over the tiles. She wanted me to follow.

  ‘Uh, is that you, Mrs Barrett?’ I asked to her back. ‘Where are you leading me?’

  The figure did not turn back or respond. She simply walked on.

  Without even deciding what to do, I followed her instinctively. And then she walked through the hidden door beneath the mezzanine stairs. The one I had opened with the skeleton key.

  I stopped just beyond the door and stared at the space where she’d been. Of course, I’d seen Luke walk through solid walls and closed doors, though he was usually very mindful not to walk through things when he was around me. (It can be a bit unnerving, as this incident quickly reminded me.) I realised it probably took a lot of concentration not to just pass through objects, if that was the natural, ghostly way.

  When I opened the door she was waiting for me on the other side, her candle illuminating the way.

  ‘The house seems not to want me here,’ I said aloud, and though her featureless face did not move and she made no sound, I thought I could hear a voice in my head.

  It is not the house, she said.

  It is someone else. Something else.

  Despite my fear, I followed her through the dank, twisting corridor. Yes. It led to the other side of the house – the secret side. I was sure of it now. Time passed strangely again. Did we walk for a minute or ten? And then I saw a faint sliver of light ahead. There was a closed door, light glowing in a thin line beneath the bottom edge seeping into the darkness. The woman in black turned, looking at me with that featureless face, and she walked through the door. Someone or something was on the other side of that door, lighting up that room, and I wanted to know who it was. She wanted me to know who it was.

  Hmmm.

  I put my ear to the door and listened. I could hear faint voices, talking so low I couldn’t even tell if it was English. ‘Celia?’ I said loudly to the door. ‘Is that you in there?’

  No, it was a man’s voice I could hear murmuring softly.

  Deus?

  I bit my lip. Perhaps I should just head to the penthouse? Mention what I saw to Celia? Being down here alone without a sword or even a torch seemed unwise. But that light was glowing under the door and I felt an almost irresistible urge to open it. I fished Celia’s skeleton key out of my satchel and looked at it. Would it fit this door? I gave it a try and it slid into the lock with some effort. I turned the key, jiggling it around a bit where it was sticky. At first I didn’t think it would work, but then I felt the old bolt slide back and the door creaked open on its hinge. Another secret room opened to me.

  ‘Hello?’

  This was a room I had not ventured into before. It was a study of some kind, with dusty books lining the walls from floor to ceiling. The light came from a tall candle that flickered from the centre of a wooden table stacked with journals and tomes.

  The woman in black could not be seen. But a man stood in front of me.

  Or most of a man.

  ‘I see you made the acquaintance of my wife. You must forgive her. She is quite shy,’ he said.

  At once I knew who it was. My great-aunt had told me all about this man – the infamous psychical researcher and scientist who’d designed the mansion in the 1880s and lived and experimented here. This was Dr Edmund Barrett, who’d died in a mysterious fire supposedly caused by spontaneous combustion – a fire that consumed his body, or most of it, leaving only ashes and his feet. Yet here he was before me, with a pleasant look on his face, looking quite well, if a tad eccentric. Barrett was about five foot ten, and he wore a three-piece suit with a wing-tip white shirt and a slim, dark cravat, tied at the neck. A gold timepiece hung elegantly from his waistcoat. His hair was white as parchment, and it was clean but rather unkempt, as if he’d combed it back before stepping out into a windstorm. The effect was magnified by the presence of a pair of leather goggles with big brass frames, of the kind a motorcyclist might have worn – if he’d been riding a 1885 Daimler Reitwagen. The goggles sat on his forehead, just above light grey eyebrows, the leather straps flattening a thin strip of his wild hair on either temple.

  And Barrett had no feet.

  His form hovered steadily above the floor.

  ‘Pandora English,’ he said in a voice that was quieter than I’d expect. ‘Please allow me to introduce myself. I am Dr Edmund Barrett.’

  My eyes jerked upwards again. I’d been staring at the air that kept his legs up.

  He knows my name, I thought.

  He took a step forward. Yes, a step, as if he had feet where there were none.

  ‘Don’t come any closer!’ I said suddenly, feeling the strange chill I often felt in the presence of supernatural energy, and death. There was something I didn’t like about Barrett. Something terrible that put me on edge.

  Barrett lifted a finger to his lips. ‘Shhhh, you’ll wake him,’ he said quietly.

  ‘I’ll wake . . .?’

  Barrett looked sideways, seemingly to his shoulder, and it was then that I realised something was not right. Or rather, more was not right than I had first noticed. Barrett had no feet, but he appeared to have an extra nose.

  At the back of his head.

  Barrett flicked his eyes to his shoulder again, and I responded by taking very slow steps, walking around him to see what he was gesturing at. For his part, Barrett stood straight and stock still, urging me to investigate. ‘It seems I may have picked up a passenger,’ he said quietly as I reached his side, keeping as much distance as I could. I was backed up against a dusty bookcase.

  Oh. My. Goodness.

  Barrett did indeed have a ‘passenger’. He – or it – was presently asleep and not exactly separate. Like Janus, the two-faced Roman god of transitions, doorways and time, Dr Edmund Barrett had a second face. At the moment that second face – actually it seemed like a whole separate head, or most of one – was sleeping. The head hung forward, eyes closed. What I could see of the terrible face was deeply wrinkled and withered, like a crone of a thousand years. Wild, dirty white hair hung over the features. I could not tell if it was male or female. I doubted it was even human. But it was certainly something powerfully sinister. I felt it immediately.

  I tiptoed backwards and looked at Barrett with wide eyes. What could I say?

  ‘Is he quite unsightly?’ he asked.

  ‘You’ve never met him?’ I whispered.

  ‘No, nor seen him.’

  ‘Not even in a mirror?’

  ‘We do not appear in mirrors, Pandora English.’

  And Sanguine did. Go figure. ‘When did – how did —’ I stuttered.

  ‘I have travelled far, dear lady, to places you could not even imagine. Places beyond the borders of the reality I once knew. And somewhere in my travels, this one,’ he said, and flicked his eyes again, ‘joined me. I don’t think you will like him when he is awake.’

  ‘What happens then?’ I ventured.

  He shook his head gently.

  The chill in the room was getting worse. My every supernatural sense was on high alert. Each instinct I possessed told me to leave that room, get as far away as I could, but this was Dr Edmund Barrett. It was his house. Who knew the secrets of the old mansion better than he? Had Barrett returned to claim his home? If he was still alive after all these years, was I merely a guest here, with Celia?

  Or maybe he was not alive, if his body ha
d been ashes and he was hovering like this in front of me and could not be seen in mirrors. What was he, exactly?

  ‘Have you been here the whole time?’ I asked, backing towards the door I had come through.

  ‘Oh, no, no. I have not been to Spektor for one hundred years.’

  My eyebrows shot up.

  ‘Pandora English, I have come back with a warning.’

  I braced myself. There had been a lot of warnings lately and I really didn’t like where this was headed – or two-headed.

  Ha ha, Pandora. That was not even remotely funny. I was so darned nervous. Part of me wanted desperately to run out of that room and get back to the safety of the penthouse, but Barrett? With a warning? I had to hear him out. He seemed nice enough, though that thing on his back filled me with dread.

  ‘You have my skeleton key, I see. And you must by now know the significance of Spektor? Of this house?’ Barrett said simply, clearly expecting me to understand what he meant.

  It was his key. Of course. Barrett had made a special key for himself, so he could use all the hidden corridors in the house.

  ‘The significance of the house?’

  I knew that this mansion at Number One Addams Avenue was the epicentre, of sorts, of a Manhattan suburb that did not appear on maps and happened to be inhabited by an unusual assortment of residents. A suburb that did not welcome strangers. A suburb that was invisible to most people. Celia had informed me that as ‘the Seventh’ I was powerful and would therefore attract powerful forces. And I’d certainly done that. But the significance of Spektor? Of the house? I wasn’t quite sure what he meant.

  ‘You know the reason I built this mansion here?’ he pressed, waiting for me to make some kind of confirmation that I understood.

  My great-aunt Celia had told me something about it being built in a way that helped focus supernatural energy, or at least that had been Barrett’s theory in the design, supposedly. That’s how she’d described it, though I knew nothing of the details.

  ‘You wanted a house to live in,’ I said. ‘And a place to build your psychical laboratory. To do your experiments.’

  He frowned. He did not appear pleased with my answer. ‘Have you gone below the basement?’

  Now I crossed my arms. My heels were at the edge of the doorway. The door had closed but I could just whip it open and run back to the lift. I’d be in the penthouse in minutes and increasingly, despite this perfectly civil exchange, I felt the need to do exactly that.

  ‘No. My great-aunt Celia has warned against that,’ I said.

  Dr Barrett took a step towards me, watching my face carefully. He clasped his hands in front of him, as if in prayer. ‘You really do not know, dear girl? Then I have more news for you than I thought.’

  I felt a shiver go up my spine. I reached back for the handle of the door.

  ‘Pandora English, you need to know that . . .’ he began.

  I waited for his words but they trailed off and a strange look came over him. Barrett seemed frozen for a moment, like he was in the middle of a gasp, a breath he couldn’t quite grab. And he just stayed like that, his mouth open.

  And then Barrett’s eyes closed and his head fell forward.

  Oh no.

  I pressed my back to the door, gripping the handle.

  Barrett’s arms began to move. They bent the other way, the suit arms folding back so that in the low candlelight it looked like his arms stopped at the elbows. But I knew what it was.

  It was the passenger. Our conversation had awoken him.

  Barrett spun around suddenly, and I stood frozen and terrified against the door, transfixed with horror. Here was another being entirely. It wore a suit, much like Barrett’s, and I wondered briefly, implausibly, where you could get something like that, a suit with two sides, only this side was a bit tattered and undone, where Barrett had seemed quite impeccable. The being’s hair was blown back now that it was awake, haloing its head like it had a finger in an electric socket. The tips of the white hair waved and swayed in the air. And this creature’s face was positively horrific to look upon, the skin wrinkled and pulled.

  And the eyes.

  The eyes glowed green.

  Luke, I thought.

  He’d had the same green eyes.

  Oh boy. Go! Go!

  I ripped open the door and ran down the corridor, somehow finding my way, and up the staircase, not looking back. By the time I reached the penthouse, I was breathless and my legs burned. I hurried inside and closed the casket, and then the door to the antechamber, relieved to lock it behind me. If Sanguine could not enter the penthouse, what about a creature like that? Whatever Barrett was, and that thing on his back? Was anywhere safe?

  ‘Great-Aunt Celia?’ I called out. ‘Great-Aunt Celia?’

  I rushed into the lounge area, skidding on the hardwood floor. Celia’s reading chair was empty. The curtains were closed over the tall, arched windows and only the chandelier above me provided light, the crystals casting delicate shadows across the ceiling.

  ‘Celia?’

  I walked to the kitchen and found it empty, and then I noticed, last of all, that her fox stole was not on the Edwardian hat stand by the door. I should have guessed. She was out.

  Somewhat reluctantly, I retired to my room with a fresh jug of water and a glass, wishing for my great-aunt’s wise words, and even a cup of her calming tea. There was no one else in the world to share my incredible discovery with. Not even Lieutenant Luke, it seemed. For good measure, I pulled the chair out from the Victorian writing desk and hooked the back of it under the doorknob.

  As if that would stop, or even slow down, any kind of nefarious supernatural being.

  Behind the veil of all the hieratic and mystical allegories of ancient doctrines, behind the darkness and strange ordeals of all initiations, under the seal of all sacred writings, in the ruins of Nineveh or Thebes, on the crumbling stones of old temples and on the blackened visage of the Assyrian or Egyptian sphinx, in the monstrous or marvellous paintings which interpret to the faithful of India the inspired pages of the Vedas, in the cryptic emblems of our old books on alchemy, in the ceremonies practised at reception by all secret societies, there are found indications of a doctrine which is everywhere the same and everywhere carefully concealed . . .

  I looked up from the haunting opening passage of Transcend­ental Magic by Eliphas Levi, and tensed. It was past midnight. I had heard footsteps and the door.

  But of course it could not be Barrett. He had no feet to make footsteps with.

  Quietly, I rose from my bed, where I’d been reading, still fully dressed. I crept to the door and put my ear to it, listening. I could hear the sound of heels on the floor. ‘Great-Aunt Celia?’ I said through the door.

  ‘Pandora?’ she called back.

  Oh, thank goodness. I unhooked the chair and opened my door. My great-aunt was hanging up her stole at the entrance. She looked striking in a tailored red skirt suit with exaggerated sleeves and a thin patent leather belt fitted to the narrow waist. As always, her black widow’s veil was in place. She regarded me with interest, clearly noting that I had something to tell her.

  ‘I met Dr Barrett,’ I said.

  She cocked her head, that beautifully painted blood-red mouth of hers curling up on one side.

  ‘Dr Barrett. Well.’

  I nodded.

  ‘He is back. And he is alive. Or perhaps not quite.’ I couldn’t think what he was, actually. In a rush I told Celia about my encounter with Dr Barrett and the thing on his back. ‘I’m very worried. Is it safe here, in the penthouse?’

  ‘The penthouse is very safe, I assure you.’

  I stepped forward. ‘Is it really? Are you sure? I know the Sanguine can’t enter here, but Dr Barrett . . . I do not think he is undead. He is something else entirely.’

  Celia placed one hand elegantly on her hip. ‘Dearest Pandora, do not worry. There is nothing to fear in this penthouse, and we can perform a protection spell to make sure it s
tays that way, if you like. Shall we do one now? Together, I think it will hold nicely.’

  I raised my eyebrows. ‘Do those work? What is it exactly?’

  Celia smiled. ‘Come to the kitchen.’

  We went to the kitchen and for a moment I thought she was going to make yet another cup of tea. She put the kettle on while I watched her mutely.

  ‘Get the salt.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, and found the salt shaker.

  ‘That won’t be enough. Try the cupboard,’ she said patiently, and I found a bag of flaked sea salt. ‘There is a container,’ she said, pointing at an empty water jug. ‘We must mix up three parts water with one part salt.’

  ‘With the boiling water?’

  ‘The boiling will purify the water. Warm up the jug while we wait for the water to be ready.’

  Once the water had boiled and then cooled enough to be poured, I mixed up the water, carefully stirring the salt through. When the jug was ready Celia walked me towards the entrance to the penthouse. ‘Now I want you to think about the word “evil”, and what it means to you in this context. Think about who or what in particular you want to guard against. Hold the image in your mind for a moment and connect it to the word.’

  I thought of that terrifying creature on Barrett’s back, its wild white hair haloing those vicious, ancient features. And I thought of Luke, with those same strange, glowing green eyes, lunging at me . . .

  ‘Good.’ Celia could clearly see by my face that I was focusing on what frightened me. The tiny hairs on my neck stood on end and I felt a little queasy.

  ‘Now visualise the area you want to protect, the “safe circle”, so to speak,’ she said.

  ‘Does it have to be a circle?’

  ‘Traditionally it was, but in this case we can work with the area we have.’

  ‘The whole penthouse?’

  She nodded. ‘We will make the penthouse our safe circle then. We will cast the spell, and as we do, you will remain focused on your intent – the forces you wish to block and the area you wish to protect.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. I’d never cast a spell before. In fact I’d lived with Celia for a couple of months without even realising that she was a witch. (Did she even agree with that label?) The protection spell she described seemed surprisingly straightforward, if foreign to me.