The Ghosts of Blackbottle Rock Page 11

  ‘In theory, it was a good idea Charlie,’ Mohan added. ‘I’m surprised I didn’t think of it first. Ghosts do make use of the energy from battery-powered devices. It’s well known in ghost hunting circles.’

  It seemed they were on the verge of giving up, and Charlie felt crushed. In three days he would be slumped in the back of the car on the long journey home, nothing accomplished, not even sure whether he would ever come back here. In his mind he heard the heart-rending screams of terrified children and parents calling their names, trying to reach them, trying to save them. For a moment he was back in the little boat off Blackbottle Rock, but now the cries were being drowned out by Henry Penhale’s smug pronouncements about his ‘hero’ ancestor. Why? Why did he tell those lies? How long had he known the truth?

  He shoved his hands in his pockets and scuffed his toe tetchily against the faded old carpet.

  ‘What was that?’ Mohan asked in an urgent whisper.

  ‘Sorry – it was me,’ Charlie admitted.

  ‘No,’ Wei-Li insisted, alert eyes darting around the room. ‘I heard you, but there was something else…’

  And now Charlie heard it, too. A creaking sound as if someone was pacing the floor somewhere in the house, every now and then stopping and listening, then moving on. He tried to probe the blackness of the room, but couldn’t make out where it was coming from. His torch picked out the mirror with its back still facing outwards, the photo was still in its place on the dresser. But the noise started again, and was now getting quicker.

  It was footsteps – and they were coming up the stairs.

  Charlie felt naked, defenceless. How did you protect yourself from a ghost? He wanted to help the victims of the Blackbottle Rock disaster, but what he had witnessed here had seemed angry, powerful. Did they take their rage out on anyone who happened to be in their presence?

  A dark shape appeared in the doorway.

  Charlie could feel its eyes on him. His legs felt rubbery, but he was ready to run all the same. He tried to tell himself ghosts weren’t solid – you could run right through them if you really had to…

  ‘What are you doing in my house?’

  Henry Penhale stepped into the light from Wei-Li’s torch. The beam reflected eerily off his glasses, making his eyes invisible.

  ‘It’s not your house – you sold it,’ Mohan said defiantly.

  ‘You still have no right to be here. How did you get in? This was my family’s home for generations and I have a key.’

  ‘I bet the owners in London don’t know you’ve still got one though,’ Charlie challenged him.

  For a moment Penhale hesitated, and Charlie knew he must be right. ‘You’re all trespassing. I’ll make sure your parents know – and the police if necessary. You will have no defence, but I’ll easily be able to explain away why I needed to pop into my old family home.’

  ‘And will you be able to explain away why you stole the rug or tore the page out of the parish register?’

  Charlie tried to sound cool, but he was shaking. It was partly anger at how the Creep kept up his lies about the Blackbottle Disaster and Cornelius Penhale’s part in it, and partly fear at standing up to an adult like this.

  To his amazement, his words seemed to hit their mark. Penhale’s expression softened and he smiled sheepishly. He drew closer to them.

  ‘Look, you youngsters appear to have done some splendid detective work, but you’ve got it all wrong…’

  Charlie wasn’t taken in by his sudden friendliness – but if it got them out of this tricky situation he wasn’t too bothered by it either

  ‘The rug actually does belong to me – it was something we never got round to taking out when we sold the place. I just happened to remember it, decided it would be nice to have a reminder of my illustrious ancestor—’

  ‘Illustrious?’ Mohan cried incredulously.

  Penhale maintained his even temper. ‘Oh, you’ve heard some of the older folk and their stories, have you? Well I can promise you they’re all wrong – quite wrong! No one knows the history of Polruan – including the story of the Blackbottle Rock disaster – as well as I do. I’ve made it my life’s work. There was a story put about by Isaac Trewin’s family that Cornelius Penhale was some sort of villain, but I can only assume they were jealous of my ancestor. They wanted Trewin to be the hero and did it by attacking Cornelius, but I can assure you…’

  The instant Henry Penhale uttered those words, Charlie noticed a flickering behind the man’s head. Catching Charlie’s gaze, Penhale broke off and turned. There was a vague play of faint light at the far end of the attic, like a candle flame seen through a net curtain. Was it a Charlie’s imagination, or was it very slowly getting bigger, brighter? Wei-Li had spotted it too, and Charlie saw a look of concern darken her face. But Penhale was more intent on telling his story.

  ‘It’s understandable that Trewin’s family should have felt that way. Petty jealousies flare up all the time in little places like this where everyone knows each other. And, with the best will in the world, stories get twisted and warped as the years pass by. Rest assured, children – Isaac Trewin and his son were lucky that Cornelius Penhale arrived to save the day…’

  He must have thought that just because they were kids they were also idiots. The more he droned on with his stupid story, the more Charlie fumed.

  But he was becoming aware that the anger wasn’t just inside him.

  It was outside too. It was building within the room.

  The already heavy atmosphere was rapidly growing thicker, more stifling. It reminded him of diving to the bottom of the deep end of a swimming pool: pressure on his body, on his lungs, his eardrums. But it was more than merely physical. It was as if the room itself was raging against Penhale’s words, and it was a fury that was building rapidly…

  ‘The mirror!’ Mohan cried, silencing Penhale in mid-flow.

  Charlie gasped. It was facing the room again, reflecting the blinking lights from the devices on the sofa. But there was something else in the background – existing in the mirror, yet not a reflection of anything in the room. The vague light they’d seen earlier was growing, taking shape. A swirling mass with distorted features was gradually forming: nose, mouth. Charlie knew it was the wrathful face he had seen at the attic window. There were two red pinpoints that Charlie had thought were the reflections of lights on one of their devices. But as the face became clearer he saw that they were eyes, burning with rage, searing right into Charlie’s heart. And then the screams began.

  They were indistinct at first, like the wind whistling down the chimney, through the gaps in the old window frames – but with an undertone of frantic wails of desperation and despair.

  For a moment Charlie had forgotten about Penhale, but now he saw the man twisting away from the image in the mirror, pressing his hands to his face. Even in the darkness, Charlie could see his whole body quivering.

  ‘Trewin!’ he gasped. ‘It’s Isaac Trewin!’

  The face shimmered and shifted as if made of smoke, but its features were fully formed now. The burning eyes searched the room like lasers, then fixed on Henry Penhale. He let out a strangled cry and made a sudden dash for the attic door. At the same moment, the vague ghostly voices became a storm of sound, filling the room, painful to the ears. It was carried on a wind as if from a storm at sea. It blew through the room, sending things flying, forcing Penhale away from the door.

  Charlie covered his ears, wincing at the din. Rising above it all, he heard Wei-Li’s cry.

  ‘It’s the mirror. It’s all coming from the mirror!’

  Its glass rippled as if made of water, and Trewin’s face started to billow outwards, into the room. A body began to form around it. The shrieking intensified, and the lights on the machines blinked out one by one until only Trewin’s red eyes remained. Charlie was cowering in a corner now, wanting to hide his face in his hands but unable to look away.

  Then a flash of lightning seemed to reach in through the window like
a jagged, silver knife. Charlie heard the hiss of static electricity, and felt his hair rise as if someone were holding a balloon over it.

  ‘The power!’ Charlie heard Mohan shout above the chaos. ‘They’re using all the power we brought – and now the electrical storm! THIS IS DANGEROUS!’

  But there was no escape. The wall of sound pressing on them, sucking the air out of the room.

  And now figures began to appear beneath the mirror around Trewin’s growing form. Fuzzy, misty shapes but clearly human. They rose and fell, gyrated, flailing arms, clutching hands – and Charlie knew what it reminded him of. Bodies thrashing in deep water.

  He stuck his fingers in his ears, praying for it to end. Mohan and Penhale were recoiling too – but not Wei-Li.

  To Charlie’s astonishment, she actually took a step towards the chaos, ignoring the wind tearing at her clothes and hair. Facing her loomed the tall figure of Isaac Trewin, fully emerged from the mirror, a dark, menacing, shimmering shape circled by whirling, grasping figures. Wei-Li was looking right into Trewin’s fiery eyes. She looked calm, her body relaxed but primed as if she were about to begin practising Tai Chi.

  ‘Only you can stop this,’ she called to Penhale.

  ‘I can’t! I can’t!’ he jabbered, his face buried in his hands.

  ‘You know the truth. You can put an end to all the years of lies. You can’t bring the dead back to life, but you can make sure that the truth about the way they died comes out. Stop living a lie!’

  When Wei-Li spoke these last words, her voice changed. It became deeper, and her face took on an eerie darker, shadowy look.

  ‘We were both guilty, Cornelius and me,’ she continued – but now it was not her voice at all but that of a man in torment. ‘But Cornelius let those people drown. A murderer in all but name. THEIR STORY MUST BE KNOWN!’

  ‘Oh, God…’ Penhale sobbed, broken, defeated. ‘I wanted to admit it but I couldn’t. The family name…’ The reeling figures circled him now, clutching at his clothes. ‘I can’t carry the burden any longer. Please – I’ll do anything, I’ll tell everyone.’ His voice suddenly rose above the nightmarish cacophony filling the room. ‘CORNELIUS PENHALE LET THEM DROWN TO SAVE HIS PRECIOUS CARGO.’

  As soon as he said this Wei-Li sank to her knees, looking drained but back to her old self. The unearthly noise ceased so abruptly that the silence itself seemed painful to Charlie’s ears. Trewin and the swirling figures quickly began to lose their shape, drifting back towards the mirror until they finally dissolved into a cloudy mass, which was sucked into the dull glass. Then came the final act in the drama. The mirror shattered into a thousand pieces that rained down onto the carpet.

  Charlie felt the heaviness in the room evaporate. He could breathe, his spirit felt unaccountably light. Climbing to his feet, he saw the storm clouds departing, revealing glittering stars and a rising crescent moon.

  Mohan had removed his glasses and was rubbing his eyes as if he’d just woken from a deep sleep, and Henry Penhale simply stared blankly at the space where the mirror had hung. Wei-Li, in the middle of the room, rose slowly and brushed strands of long black hair, damp with sweat, from her face. Charlie saw tears in her eyes – but she was smiling at him. She was feeling it too.

  They had released the ghosts of Blackbottle Rock.

  sixteen

  ‘I’ve known the truth for a few years,’ said Henry Penhale. They had gathered in the kitchen of Rosebud Cottage before heading home. Charlie thought he looked older, the lines on his forehead deeper. All his old smugness and arrogance had gone, and he even seemed somehow smaller.

  ‘And if I’m honest I’d guessed at it long before that. I’d heard the rumours from locals whose grandparents had been alive at the time – but they weren’t keen to go into detail and I wasn’t keen to hear any. Cornelius Penhale was a local hero whose story helped bring tourists to Polruan, and well, I enjoyed playing the local celebrity: giving my talks and guided tours, having newspaper and television people approaching me…’

  ‘But you can still do that,’ said Wei-Li. ‘Polruan and Fowey have lots of interesting history.’

  His face brightened. ‘You’re right. I suppose it was more about me. He was my ancestor. I wanted to share his fame.’

  ‘So why did you steal the page from the burial register?’ Charlie asked.

  Penhale smiled ruefully. ‘Ah – you’re to blame for that. You and your mother.’

  ‘She’s not my mother,’ he shot back a little more eagerly than he’d meant to.

  ‘Oh, sorry. Well, Sue contacted me out of the blue – an author wanting to write a book about the Blackbottle Rock disaster. I panicked. No one had ever gone digging into the historical records – they’d always come to me, accepted my version. I was especially worried because a few weeks previously I’d discovered a little note scrawled in Isaac Trewin’s hand on the back of the page that had the burial entries for the victims. He had secretly scrawled it there, probably near the end of his life, in the hope that it would be discovered after his death. It said that the truth of the Blackbottle Rock story was hidden within in the rug. You see, Trewin knew the rug would always be there because it was in a room where Cornelius, guilt burning in his heart, placed pictures of the dead and other things connected with them as a kind of secret memorial. He stipulated in his will that everything be preserved just as it was for as long as his family owned the house. When it was sold a few years ago, I persuaded the new owners to keep the attic locked up. I knew Sue would eventually stumble on the truth, so I decided I had to act…’

  ‘What do you intend to do now, sir?’ Mohan asked.

  Penhale rubbed a hand over his balding head and let out a weary breath. ‘The truth has to come out, and it has to come from me.’

  ‘But you could get into serious trouble – breaking into the church, stealing from a precious book,’ Charlie said, barely able to believe that he was actually feeling sorry for the broken man he’d known as the Creep.

  The little man straightened his back and lifted his chin. ‘Well, then, it’s a good lesson to you young people. Not that you’d ever do anything like that, I’m sure. But when you do, you have to be big enough and strong enough to own up and face the consequences. I shall hand myself in to the police first thing in the morning.’

  ‘But Sue told me you’re supposed to be unveiling the plaque to Cornelius Penhale then,’ Charlie pointed out.

  Henry Penhale caught his breath for a moment. He had clearly forgotten about that. ‘Well…that will have to be cancelled, the plaque destroyed.’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ Wei-Li piped up. ‘Why don’t you let the story come out a bit at a time rather than shock everyone – especially the locals who think of Cornelius as a hero. You could “stumble” on a clue here, a clue there, giving people time to get used to the idea that there’s more to the story.’

  ‘But what about his criminal activities?’ Mohan demanded.

  Henry Penhale smiled again. ‘Your friend likes to speak plainly, doesn’t he?’

  ‘That’s one way of describing it,’ Wei-Li sighed. ‘But I don’t see any reason why anyone should know about that. What good would it do now? Return the page – secretly if you like.’

  ‘Yes – and make some sort of donation to the church to cover the cost of repairs,’ Charlie added.

  ‘That would be quite wrong,’ Mohan announced. ‘And legally speaking, I believe it would make us accessories to a crime. I’ll google it to confirm my suspicions, but—’

  Charlie and Wei-Li’s combined glares made him fall silent.

  A few minutes later, they all trooped out of Rosebud Cottage for what Charlie knew would be the last time. The back edges of the storm clouds were sailing away over the distant hills, where cosy yellow house lights dotted the darkness on the Fowey side of the river. It felt good to feel the cool night air on his face – and to know that he and Fowey Paranormal Investigations had completed their mission.

  ‘And so it gives me great
pleasure to unveil this long-overdue plaque,’ declared Henry Penhale to the small collection of locals and curious tourists gathered by the quay wall. The plaque itself was covered by a little purple curtain, and Penhale’s hand lightly held a thin cord, ready to reveal it to the world. Charlie thought he was enjoying the limelight again, almost like his old self – but maybe not so irritatingly haughty.

  Then Penhale let go of the cord for a moment. ‘But before I do, I should mention that in the course of my researches, I’ve unearthed new information about what happened on that fateful day in 1856. There is still more to do, but for now suffice it to say it’s become clear that Cornelius Penhale’s role was not nearly as heroic as I had once thought. As his descendant, you can imagine my disappointment!’

  There was some half-hearted chuckling at this attempted joke. Penhale grasped the cord once again.

  ‘What I can say is that this is a story about tragedy and promising lives cut short, not heroism. So I now proudly reveal a new version of this memorial – to the victims of Polruan’s Blackbottle Rock disaster.’

  He pulled the cord and the curtain swept back exposing a shiny blue rectangle listing the names of all those who lost their lives. Charlie saw there was no mention of Cornelius Penhale on it at all. Polite applause echoed round the harbour, and then the crowd rapidly melted away to get on with their day. A local reporter approached Penhale with his notebook at the ready.

  ‘Well,’ said Sue as they wandered back to their cottage. ‘I’m not sure what all that was about, but it’s been a worthwhile trip. I’ve gathered more than enough information to make it into a good story.’

  ‘I’ve got a better one,’ Charlie said half under his breath.

  She smiled wryly. ‘I’m sure you have. But I’m writing a local history, not a ghost story!’

  ‘Eh?’ Dad frowned.

  ‘Didn’t you know Polruan was haunted?’ Sue asked innocently.

  ‘As in spooks?’

  ‘Lots of ’em,’ Charlie informed him.

  ‘Yeah, right.’