House of Bones by Graham Masterton Page A

dining-room while Lucy went into the kitchen. There was a hefty 1930s dining-table and a huge maple-veneered sideboard with a dusty octagonal mirror hanging above it. In the window stood a faded display of dried flowers and bracken.
    â€œAnything?” he called out to Lucy.
    â€œNot in the kitchen. But there’s tins of peas and carrots in the larder, and a loaf of bread in the bread-bin that’s practically turned to stone.”
    John opened the drawer in the top of the sideboard. Inside, tarnished silver cutlery lay like a shoal of goldfish. Whoever had lived here had left almost everything behind. It was as if they had just walked out of their life and never returned.
    As he closed the drawer, he thought he could see a reflection in the mirror of a dark, pale-faced figure standing in the hallway behind him. He was so frightened that he felt as if cold fingers were running down his back. He didn’t even dare to turn around. Instead, he reached up with a trembling hand and wiped the dust from themirror so that he could see the apparition more clearly.
    When he did so, however, it disappeared, and Lucy came in through the door as if there was nothing there at all.
    â€œWhat’s the matter?” she asked him.
    â€œI saw it again. The statue.”
    â€œWhere?” she said, looking nervously around. “I didn’t see anything.”
    John pushed past her and went out in the hallway. He looked left and right, and then he looked upstairs. A weak light filtered through net curtains the colour of cold tea. “I saw it. I swear I did.”
    â€œJohn, that statue was solid wood. It weighed a tonne. Nobody could carry it around even if they wanted to.”
    â€œThat’s the point. It wasn’t being carried around. It was alive.”
    â€œ
Alive
?”
    â€œI saw it standing behind me. I swear it.”
    Lucy said, “Enough, John. You’re really letting this get to you.” But he could tell that – for all her reassurance – she was just as scared as he was.
    â€œI swear to you I saw it. It was right there, standing in the hallway.”
    â€œPerhaps you’re right. Perhaps we’d better go.”
    John said, “Wait.” A sudden thought had occurred to him and he went back into the sitting-room. The chairs were all still covered by their dust sheets, and the lumpy one apparently undisturbed. Yet where else could the figure have gone so quickly?
    John approached the chair with his heart beating hard.
    â€œYou don’t think it’s under
there
?” asked Lucy.
    John was too frightened even to answer her. He bent down and took hold of the trailing edge of the dust sheet. He lifted it up a little way, and then he gave it a sharp sideways tug. Lucy squealed in terror, and John jumped back, stumbling against the arm of the sofa.
    In the chair were two braided cushions, a rolled-up mat and an anglepoise desk lamp. Lucy pressed her hand over her heart in relief.
    â€œLet’s take a very quick look upstairs,” she said. “Then I think we’d better get out of here.”
    John’s instinct was to leave there and then, but he followed Lucy to the bottom of the stairs. They both looked up to the landing. On the walls were six or seven small landscape paintings, all of them depicting deserted heathland or rainswept mountains.
    There was something infinitely depressing about these pictures, and John noticed that in each of them there was a small group of figures dressed in cloaks, like monks, and in some of them there was a tall dark figure with horns.
    â€œDon’t you just hate these pictures?” said Lucy, as she followed John up the stairs.
    The stairs didn’t creak, but John stopped halfway up to listen.
    â€œDid you hear something?” he asked.
    â€œAn aeroplane, that’s all.”
    â€œNo, it wasn’t that. It was something like a really heavy blanket being
dragged
.”
    Lucy listened,