The Secret of Crickley Hall by James Herbert Page A

and serving in an all-night Mini-Mart—mostly night-time labour so that he could hunt for work as an engineer during the day (on occasions, he had introduced himself to as many as five engineering companies during the course of one day). Eventually his persistence paid off: he got himself taken on as a junior trainee structural and mechanical engineer in a large, global corporation, APCU Engineering, and he had never looked back. At the age of twenty-one, Gabe had been sent across to England, and there he'd stayed ever since.
    And then, he and Eve had met. In that hip bar in pre-film Notting Hill. They had quickly married when she had become pregnant with Loren and neither of them had regretted the union: she loved him now as much as ever—no, perhaps even more than in the early days; she had come to know so much about him—and she was sure Gabe felt exactly the same way about her. It was just that she was so… so distracted now, thought too much about their lost son. If only Cam would… would he come back ? she asked herself. There was still a faint, almost elusive, hope in her that one day soon their son would be returned to them. As long as he remained on the missing list there was always that chance…
    A flurry of rain, driven by a vigorous wind, beat against the bedroom's two windows, making her start. She craned her neck to look towards the sound as the windows rattled in their frames. The night outside was wild, unrelenting, and no friend to slumber. Eve faced the ceiling again, lonely because her partner slept. She tried to clear her mind of everything but, as ever, the misery crept back, staking its claim.
    Oh God, don't let it be so , her mind pleaded as it had for almost a year. Missing doesn't have to mean dead. Someone could have taken him for their own, some stranger could be loving him as we love him. Please, please send my innocent child back to me ! In the daytime lately it had become easier to suppress the torment but in the darkness of night, when others slept and she felt so alone, the thoughts were almost impossible to control. Yet even the possibility that Cam might be dead seemed like a betrayal of her son.
    The wind suddenly died and the rain's fury went with it. Now the rain pattered against the glass. Low clouds overhead must have parted, for moonlight entered the bedroom.
    Then a sound different from the steady soft drum of the rain. It was a tapping and it came from somewhere out on the landing.
    Eve listened, tried to determine its source. It was becoming louder, no longer a tapping but a muffled knocking.
    She levered herself up on her elbows, looking towards the open doorway, wondering if she should wake Gabe, whose gentle snoring could not drown out the sound coming from the landing.
    After last night, the landing light had been left on so that the girls would be able to see should they stir from their sleep and become disorientated. But it was a dim glow, the lightbulb weak, hardly strong enough to govern the area it was supposed to; instead it seemed to create even deeper shadows, shadows that were impenetrable.
    The bedroom became almost darker again as the moon was concealed behind another cloud, but there was just enough light from the landing to see the small figure that suddenly appeared in the doorway.
    Eve drew in a sharp, startled breath.
    'Mummy,' Loren said from the bedroom's threshold, 'I can hear someone knocking.'
    Eve let her breath go and relaxed her tensed shoulders.
    'I think it's coming from the cupboard again,' Loren said.
    'I can hear it, darling.'
    They both listened as if for reaffirmation. Loren took a step into the room. 'Mummy?'
    The fear in her daughter's voice caused Eve to tense again. She nudged Gabe's shoulder with her elbow.
    'Gabe, wake up,' she said in a harsh whisper. 'Gabe.'
    Loren was standing by the bottom of the bed now, a hand on one of the corner posts. 'Daddy!' Although urgent, she spoke in a whisper as if she didn't want to be heard by anything