The Ghosts of Blackbottle Rock Read online

  First published by Our Street Books, 2017

  Our Street Books is an imprint of John Hunt Publishing Ltd., Laurel House, Station Approach, Alresford, Hants, SO24 9JH, UK

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  Text copyright: Martyn Beardsley 2016

  ISBN: 978 1 78535 615 5

  978 1 78535 616 2 (ebook)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2016954754

  All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publishers.

  The rights of Martyn Beardsley as author have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Design: Stuart Davies

  Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY, UK

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  Author’s Note

  Polruan is a real place in Cornwall, and if you ever visit you will be able to follow in the footsteps of Charlie, Wei-Li and Mohan. Most of the places mentioned are to be found in Polruan and Fowey, but in some cases I have changed the name. ‘Treffry House’, for example, is actually Place House, the ancient home of the Treffry family. All of the characters in the story, however, are the product of my imagination. In particular, I’m sure the owner of the real gift shop isn’t even slightly creepy! And there isn’t a haunted house on West Street – as far as I know…

  one

  Charlie knew the Witch was watching his every move. Watching, waiting. Plotting to destroy him. Sitting at the back of the little ferry as it chugged and bobbed through the water from Fowey on its way to Polruan, he knew she would be able to see him directly from her lair right now. The orange and white boat nudged against the stone steps of the quay and people began to stand, ready to disembark. Charlie rose too, clutching a rail to keep his balance while the ferryman hauled on a rope to secure the vessel to a rusty metal ring bolted to one of the steps.

  It felt as though she was trying to pull his gaze in her direction: to the old fisherman’s house, now a holiday cottage nestling at the end of a short, gloomy alley at the back of the quay where the sun’s rays never reached. He resisted. The showdown would come soon enough. He clambered over the side of the ferry and trudged up the steps, focusing only on the backs of the tourists in front of him.

  Now came the hard part. Charlie’s legs dragged stiffly and reluctantly; his heart felt heavy like black smog. But he had to go through with it. He walked along the busy little quay, weaving among the dawdling sightseers and tightly parked cars. Heading for the Witch’s lair.

  Passing from the warm Cornish sunlight into the shady coolness of the alley, Charlie soon saw that the door was ajar. Of course. Much as he had put this moment off, she knew he had to come sooner or later. Was he in fact entering now of his own free will, or had the Witch planted something in his mind that had made him do it? Charlie didn’t know. He didn’t seem to know anything for sure any more – except that he had to get this over with. He hesitated, then pushed against the door and was swallowed by the darkness of the interior. Surrounded as it was by tightly packed cottages, very little natural daylight reached this ground floor room. Without a light on, and while his eyes still struggled to readjust, it was hard to tell whether there was even anyone in here with him. He edged forward cautiously. There was a step where the reception area became an open-plan kitchen, and he felt for it tentatively with his foot.

  Then he heard the faintest of creaks, and he knew he wasn’t alone. Charlie couldn’t so much hear her breathing as sense it.

  By now, his eyes were used to the lack of light and he could see right to the back of the kitchen. There was no one there. Yet it continued – the faintest whisper of breath in the air.

  ‘Charlie…’

  He sprang back, startled, confused.

  ‘Charlie, come here.’

  Her voice was coming from above him. Then he remembered the layout of this place – he had walked past a central wooden-railed stairway on his left, which twisted up to the next floor. She must be up there, looking down at him. He turned to face her.

  ‘Why can’t you leave me alone? You’ve already trapped my dad. Why do you need me as well?’ He was surprised by how strong and confident his own voice sounded. It boosted his morale.

  ‘I haven’t trapped anyone, Charlie. Your father wants to be with me. I only want you and me to be friends…’

  Her voice was gentle, quiet, almost pleading – a tone he’d never heard from her before. But it didn’t fool him for a minute. ‘You’re just mad because I’m not a pushover like he was! He was so lonely after Mum died he would have been taken in by anybody’s smooth talking.’

  Charlie suddenly darted up the stairs. He brushed past her, past the first floor and the sound of the TV coming from the room where he knew his father would be, and on to the next level and his own bedroom. He slammed the door behind him and sank down on the edge of his bed, planting his elbows on his knees and flopping his chin so heavily into his cupped hands that his teeth clicked unexpectedly and painfully together. He didn’t care. He didn’t care if he’d broken all his teeth. He didn’t care about anything. Looking out through his window over the roofs of the holiday cottages, he could see Polruan harbour below. The end of the Fowey River estuary was on the left, opening out to the sea. The backs of other holiday cottages and the storeroom of the Beachcomber, the gift shop on the quay, faced him. And that was it. Two pubs, one tiny general store, an even tinier café. That was Polruan – and they thought he would enjoy it! There were exciting places in Cornwall, Charlie knew because he had visited them in the past, when Mum was alive. Places with amusement arcades, adventure parks with giant water flumes, golden beaches where you could go body-boarding. This wasn’t one of those places. And even if it had been, Charlie wasn’t in the mood for it. Maybe if it had been just himself and Dad… The Witch spoiled everything – and it looked like she was here to stay. Everything was ruined forever.

  A seagull flapped lazily past his window. Its size took him by surprise, and it mewed plaintively the way real gulls did, unlike the little scrawny little things squabbling over scraps in his home town. It landed on the chimney of a roof just below his window, where the houses sloped down Polruan’s steep hill towards the river, and seemed to look at him with its beady yellow eyes. Charlie wished he had the gull’s wings, its freedom just to launch itself into the sky whenever it wanted to get away and look down on all the stupid human activity below…

  The sound of the doorknob turning snapped him back to reality.

  ‘Charlie…’

  His father sloped into the room, gently pulling the door to again. He was tall and angular in a slightly ungainly way; pain was etched into his normally kindly features and soft blue eyes, and Charlie couldn’t ignore the glimmer of guilt he sensed behind the dark clouds of his own moodiness. He seemed to hate the whole stupid world these days – but if there was one exception it was Dad, who was in the same boat as him. Or would have been if the Witch hadn’t come along.

  ‘I know how difficult it’s been for you…’

  ‘No you don’t.’

  ‘I know it has been difficult. I can understand your feelings towards Sue—’

  ‘No you can’t.’

  Dad sighe
d wearily.

  ‘I think I can.’ His voice was firmer now, and Charlie sensed he had better not push his luck too far. Dad was the king of laid-back, but he had learned two things about that. One was that when he did lose his temper, it was something wondrous and scary to behold (there had only been two times in Charlie’s whole life, and he could remember both of them in vivid and awesome detail). There was never any physical violence or even the hint of it. It was far worse than that. The other point was – and there was no getting away from it – if you were such a dork that you made even the king of laid-back himself lose his temper, you must surely deserve everything you got.

  ‘Did you know you’ve made Sue cry?’

  As bad as things were, Charlie was shocked. He had never made an adult cry before. There was a weird feeling of power – but a much more awful, horrible guilt. His venomous words to her echoed in his ears, and now they didn’t sound so clever. He had gone too far, and a braver kid than him would offer to apologise. But to his shame, it did occur to him that if he had upset her that much, maybe she actually would give in and leave them alone…

  ‘Believe it or not, Charlie, she actually likes you.’

  ‘No she—’

  ‘She does! She understands – and don’t say she doesn’t! I know her and understand her better than anyone I’ve met in my whole life… Except Mum of course,’ Dad added hastily. ‘And she understands you better than you think. Her parents split up when she was eight, and she never saw or heard from her dad again.’

  ‘Splitting up’s not the same as someone dying.’

  ‘No, but as far as it affected her life her dad might as well have been dead. She realises how hard it is for you to have a new woman coming into my life, and she would never pretend she could take the place of Mum. But she loves me and I love her, and we have to try to find a way to make this work. Please be patient, Chas; if not for her sake, then for mine.’

  Charlie made a movement of his head which might have been a nod, but which wasn’t distinct enough to be held against him in the future if he couldn’t keep to it. Dad came over and hugged him. It was their first hug in quite a while, and Charlie suddenly found he didn’t want to be let go of. He felt a funny tightness in his throat and a sting in his eyes when Dad pulled away with a ruffle of his hair and crept out of the room, but he quickly swallowed the feeling back before it engulfed him.

  Charlie pulled up the old-fashioned wooden chair from beside his bed, tipping off his book, watch, and the sweaty T-shirt he’d meant to put in the wash days ago, and positioned the chair squarely in front of the window. Then he reached across and grabbed his binoculars from the dressing table and settled himself down to watch the boats cruising between the open sea and the sun-sparkled Fowey estuary. It was the only thing he derived any pleasure from in this place. He was fascinated by the locals pottering about in little boats as casually as people in cars and kids on bikes back home. He often watched the ferry motoring endlessly back and forth, transporting locals, bringing new batches of holidaymakers. He liked trying to identify the nationality of the flags of some of the more bigger and exotic boats that came in from time to time. And just occasionally he would spot the black-and-white pilot’s boat heading out; he had come to realise that this heralded the arrival of a big container ship bringing a new cargo to the industrial port, just out of sight round the bend in the river beyond Fowey. These vessels were sometimes so long that they filled almost the whole window as they passed by, and the bridge was level with the upper floors of the houses on the opposite shore. The mighty blast from their horns echoed across the water and around the hills surrounding the amphitheatre-like estuary.

  Another regular sight now caught his eye. Every so often, the man who ran the gift shop would traipse up the steps to a door at the back, pull out a bunch of keys, unlock it and disappear inside for a few minutes. Hardly exciting, but in a place like this almost anything that happened could seem interesting – and there was something creepy about him. He was a small, slightly built man, quite a bit older than Dad. He had a little upturned nose, a few strands of grey hair combed across his bald head, and wore thick-lensed glasses with heavy black frames. On this occasion the man left the door open when he went in, which was unusual. Charlie could see a trestle table with something on it: large, dark, rectangular, like some sort of box. Out of a combination of boredom and sheer nosiness, Charlie trained his binoculars in that direction and adjusted the focus. It was just some sort of big book with a stiff, plain cover and, judging by the yellowed edges of the pages, a very old one. The shopkeeper came back into view and, after checking outside that he was still undisturbed, he turned to the table and opened the book. He hunched over it, frowning, thumbing through as if searching for something in particular. This scene was being played out less than twenty metres below him, and thanks to his binoculars Charlie could see that the pages were filled with spidery handwriting divided into several columns, like some sort of register or accounts book. Then, the man seemed to find whatever it was he was looking for. He smoothed the page fully open, took off his glasses, breathed on them and wiped them. He almost pressed his pug nose into the book and stared at some particular entry for several minutes, as if it were a treasure map and he had found the X marking the spot. Finally, he slowly straightened up. He gazed into space for a time, and Charlie thought he detected a slight shake of the head. Then, without warning, he suddenly grasped the page he had been reading and tore it out.

  Charlie was shocked. Even though he couldn’t see what the book was, it looked somehow important, special – not the sort of historical volume people normally vandalised. The man folded the ripped-out page and put it in the back pocket of his trousers, slamming the book shut. He shuffled out of sight for a moment, and when he returned he had a plastic shopping bag. He placed the book in the bag, stuck his head out of the door to check that no one was about, then left the storeroom. He locked the door and set off with the concealed book under his arm.

  Charlie sat back with a furrowed brow and let out a long breath. What on earth was that all about?

  There was something weird about the little man, no doubt about it. Charlie didn’t like the look of him – never had. But then, these days, Charlie didn’t like the look of anyone.

  two

  The following day, Charlie had to tag along with Dad and the Witch, exploring the area.

  Correction – Sue.

  He had vowed to at least try to think of her less harshly, even if he couldn’t – and had no intention of – making friends with her. She wasn’t even the prettiest of the women Dad had met since Mum had died. The first time he saw her, Danny Lewis, his mate at school, had tried to make out she was the sexiest thing since Miss Amery who taught the Year Sevens. But then Sue had been wearing a top which showed her boobs a bit. Okay, she was quite curvy and had shiny, swishy dark hair and shiny, dazzly dark eyes. Things like that easily impressed Danny. Especially a glimpse of boobs. Charlie wasn’t so easily impressed by appearances – and in this case he refused to be.

  Dad and Sue hauled themselves up the lung-burningly steep hill out of the village, towards the coast and cliff-top footpath. The sun sparkled on sea as blue as in postcards, stretching out to the vast horizon, disturbed only by a distant boat with white sails leaving a trail of ripples in its wake. It was pretty breath- taking – but Charlie kept the thought to himself. They were looking for a specific location, which was one of the main reasons they’d come to Polruan. Sue was a writer, and she had plans to write a book about a supposedly famous shipwreck here. Something about a poor fisherman in a sinking boat being saved by a local hero, moving to London and going on to become a successful businessman. It was known as the Blackbottle Rock Disaster, because although the man who was saved had done well for himself, he hadn’t been alone, and many others had drowned.

  Charlie’s pumping heart and rasping breath had just started to settled down from the climb, when they spotted a plain wooden bench just off the footpath. As t
hey wandered along a grassy slope overlooking the sea, Dad looked up from his map.

  ‘This is it! Blackbottle Rock is right beneath us.’

  Below the field, Charlie could see jagged, pale grey rocks. At the bottom, there was a bigger and much darker, prominent rock with white waves gently washing over its base.

  ‘It looks nothing like a black bottle.’

  Dad shrugged. ‘Maybe it does if you’re on a ship at sea.’

  ‘Lantic Bay…’ Sue murmured distractedly, gazing down at the scene. ‘Twenty-three died – eleven of them children. It’s a lot of people – must have ripped the heart out of a little place like Polruan.’

  ‘At-lantic Bay,’ Charlie corrected her, triumphant at spotting her fault.

  But Dad shoved the map under his nose. ‘No, mate. Lantic Bay.’

  ‘It’s a misprint, then…’

  ‘You’d think so,’ said Sue in her usual infuriatingly understanding tone. ‘But I’ve seen it on other maps too.’

  She took some pictures and made notes in a little book, took one last wistful look down at the rock as if she could see the lifeless bodies being tossed and broken against its dark, unyielding presence, and then they turned back to explore Polruan itself.

  ‘Why do we need to look round?’ Charlie whined once they were back among the narrow streets and lanes, with weird names like Tinker’s Hill and Betty Woons. ‘We’ve been here four days – we know it’s just a one-horse town!’

  ‘There are lots of twisty little side-streets. It’s interesting just to wander round old fishing villages,’ Dad ventured.

  ‘I always think it feels like going back in time when you lose yourself in quaint old places like this,’ Sue added dreamily.

  ‘It’s not big enough to get lost in,’ grunted Charlie.

  ‘Yes,’ said Dad – to Sue, not Charlie. ‘Especially here. There are lots of lovely old villages in Britain, but Cornwall is, well…’