The Ghosts of Blackbottle Rock Read online

  ten

  Charlie felt the gentle warmth of the sun caressing his face, and luxuriated in the butterscotch glow playing on the lids of his closed eyes. He turned over and tried to go back to sleep, but by now he had also become conscious of the soothing but insistent rush of water on the little beach nearby, washing up and slipping back, again and again to its own timeless rhythm. It drew him into wakefulness.

  A perfect summer’s morning – for a few glorious seconds. Why did that lurking feeling of dread in pit of his stomach always spoil things these days? Like storm clouds creeping across a pristine blue sky, darker thoughts crowded into his mind, and he remembered.

  He had no mother any more. He was half an orphan. His dad was living with a witch. He was spending a holiday in a dead-end town. Okay, it had become more interesting of late – but scary spooks and robberies weren’t exactly what he had been looking for on this holiday. Oh, and tonight he was supposed to be actually going in search of ghosts who made hateful faces at windows.

  Breakfast was an uneasy time. He had butterflies in his stomach about tonight, imagining Rosebud’s evil spirits possessing him, the way people in films were. And he had to fib to Dad and Sue about why he didn’t want to go with them on a trip to the beach at a place called Par. Dad wanted to go body-boarding and have a picnic – but Wei-Li and Mohan were coming over to plan how they were going to get in to the old cottage…

  ‘I’m feeling whacked. I didn’t sleep very well last night for some reason, and then the seagulls woke me up as soon as it was light. Anyway, Wei-Li and Mohan are coming across on the ferry later and I said I’d meet up with them…’

  ‘Seagulls? I didn’t hear them,’ Dad said.

  ‘Your snoring probably drowned it out,’ said Sue.

  ‘I don’t snore!’

  ‘You do!’ Charlie and Sue said virtually together. Charlie found himself grinning conspiratorially with her. He was kind of annoyed with himself. It was like giving in to her. But it felt strangely nice, too.

  ‘Charlie can go and see his new friends. We can do Par tomorrow if the weather holds. We could have a stroll around – and there’s still a few things I want to find out for my book anyway about the Blackbottle Rock disaster anyway.’

  ‘The weather isn’t going to hold according to the forecast,’ Dad said. ‘But I suppose there’ll be another chance before we leave.’

  Charlie could tell Dad was trying hard to hide how disappointed he was at not doing a family thing together, and he suddenly felt guilty and dishonest. But then, if Dad only knew how important this was he would understand.

  ‘There’s something odd about it, you know,’ said Sue half to herself, chewing on a piece of toast.

  ‘Odd about what?’ Dad asked.

  ‘This Blackbottle Rock business.’

  Charlie tried to hide his sudden extra interest.

  ‘See, most of the locals are proud of Cornelius Penhale and love talking about how he single-handedly saved who he could from the storm. But one or two older folk seem reluctant to talk about it – especially about Cornelius himself. Whenever I try to press them they clam up.’

  ‘I suppose they’re sick of hearing about him,’ said Dad. ‘Henry Penhale’s made such a fuss about the story that newcomers would think there’s nothing else to the history of Polruan. It’d get on my nerves eventually.’

  ‘You could be right, but I wonder… One old boy I was chatting to in the mini-market muttered something under his breath as he walked away that sounded like “It wasn’t the storm that killed ’em…” or words to that effect.’

  ‘Well, you said yourself you didn’t hear him properly. Surely he was saying, “It was the storm that killed them”,’ Dad said. ‘Meaning “What more is there to say?”.’

  Sue seemed to accept that she must have misheard the old man’s words.

  Charlie wasn’t so sure.

  Charlie leaned against the rails lining the quay, watching for the approach of the Polruan ferry. There were plenty of people about and the Creep had to be busy in his shop, so Charlie wasn’t too worried about any awkward encounters – though he made sure to stand at an angle where he had the Beachcomber in his peripheral vision. If the weather was going to change, there was no sign of it yet. The clouds of yesterday lurked on the horizon, but the sun was floating above the green hills where he’d followed the Hall Walk, reflecting so dazzlingly on the water that he couldn’t look at the river without screwing up his eyes. The sound of hammering and clanging echoed around the boatyard on the other side of the quay, where a big, rusty old fishing boat was being repaired. Down on the ‘beach’ – which was probably no more than half the size of a football pitch that disappeared altogether at high tide – a bronzed young man and woman hauled sleek canoes out into the water and clambered aboard, paddling effortlessly away in the direction of the Pont Pill creek he’d crossed yesterday.

  A large pleasure boat motored majestically in from the sea, and once it had passed Charlie saw the orange and white ferry making its approach. His phone bleeped before it docked. It was a text from Mohan – but since they would soon be talking face-to-face, Charlie didn’t bother to read it and but the phone back in the pocket of his shorts.

  He walked to the top of the stone steps as the ferry disgorged its passengers – only to find that neither Mohan nor Wei-Li were there. What he did notice, though, was a rather scruffy youth of about fourteen or fifteen. He wore a sort of wannabe gangster uniform of baggy jeans hanging halfway down his backside, and an over-sized baseball cap on sideways, partially covering a severe haircut that looked as if he’d done it himself. Charlie avoided making eye contact, but sensed that the youth was sizing him up as he climbed the step steps. Charlie fixed his eyes on Treffry House in the distance, willing his friends to arrive by some other means pretty soon. But all the time the dodgy kid was lurking nearby and, Charlie knew, sizing him up. He was the sort who would wait until you finally looked his way, then growl, ‘You lookin’ at me?’ He wasn’t going to give him the excuse.

  He slipped away from the rails as a group of four middle-aged women hikers passed him, and followed them past the Beachcomber and the Schooner pub to the tiny ‘square’ near the bottom of Fore Street, the road leading up the hill out of Polruan. The plan was to hang around on the bench opposite Crumpets teashop – but the youth had followed him, and was heading his way. Charlie made to move off again.

  ‘Hey,’ his stalker called curtly.

  He could have pretended not to hear, but he knew he’d only be putting off the inevitable. He turned to face the youth.

  ‘Charlie?’

  ‘How did you know my name?’

  ‘Didn’t ’ee get the text? They said they’d let ’ee know.’ He had a real old-fashioned Cornish accent. Like a pirate.

  Charlie whipped his phone out.

  Will be bit late. Talk to Kev

  Typical Mohan – short and to the point.

  ‘You’re Kev?’ Charlie asked, and received a brisk nod in reply. ‘Are you in the FPI as well?’

  Kev sniggered. ‘All that ghost crap? I sometimes help ’em out.’

  ‘What for, if you don’t believe in ghosts?’

  ‘Money.’

  There wasn’t really any answer to that.

  ‘So what help do they need today?’

  Kev ignored his question. ‘Do ’ee believe in ’em?’

  It sounded almost like a challenge, and Charlie decided to hedge his bets until he got to know Kev a bit better.

  ‘Not sure. Never seen one.’

  ‘We’re gonna see about gettin’ into this cottage. That’s what I’m for.’

  ‘Do you know the owner, then? Can you get hold of the key?’

  ‘Yeah, the key.’ Kev smiled darkly. ‘Summen’ like that.’

  ‘Believe in UFOs?’ Kev demanded.

  ‘Nah,’ Charlie replied, still playing it safe. Or so he thought.

  ‘Well they DO exist, see?’ said Kev, raising his voice. Cos I seen one
, right?’

  ‘Oh, right…’

  ‘It were over Penzance. Two lights, it had: green and red, blinkin’ on and off.’

  Even Charlie knew that all planes displayed green and red lights. ‘Oh…’

  ‘And it weren’t no plane,’ Kev added as if aware of the weakness to his story. ‘Cos it were completely silent.’

  ‘How big were lights?’

  ‘Tiny.

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘But I saw ’em, all right. Extratorrential, that’s what it was. Show me where this place is.’

  Charlie led Kev up West Street, passing by the little lane where his own holiday cottage lay, until they came to Rosebud. Charlie held back across the street, but Kev walked boldly up to the house. First, he peered in through the window, then he scrutinised the front door closely before re-joining Charlie.

  ‘It’s cool,’ he reported.

  ‘Great,’ Charlie replied – though he wasn’t quite sure what was cool. Perhaps he just needed reassuring that it really was the cottage for which he could get the key. His phone began to ring.

  ‘Sorry we’re late, Charlie.’ It was Wei-Li. ‘I had to run an errand for Dad. Where are you?’

  ‘Outside Rosebud Cottage – with Kev.’

  ‘Be with you soon.’

  It only took them a minute to come.

  ‘We shouldn’t stay here too long,’ said Mohan. ‘Don’t want to draw attention to ourselves.’

  ‘Kev says he can get hold of the key for it,’ Charlie explained.

  Kev made a sort of half-snorting, half-guffawing noise, and Wei-Li and Mohan exchanged glances.

  ‘Key?’ Wei-Li queried.

  ‘I thought that was the idea…’

  ‘We’ve already attempted to gain permission to enter the property through official channels,’ Mohan explained, shoving his glasses up his nose. He waited while a young couple with a pushchair passed by before continuing. ‘And we were denied by people who assume young people can’t act in a responsible manner and aren’t capable of ridding a village of a supernatural problem.’

  Charlie’s spirits sank. All this fuss, and the ghost watch was over before it started.

  ‘So Kev’s going to gain entrance for us using his own methods.’

  ‘Gain entrance…’ Charlie gawped. ‘You mean – BREAK IN!’

  ‘Ssshh,’ Charlie’ said Wei-Li looking up and down the street. ‘Let’s go down to the quay.’

  Once they were sitting on a seat overlooking the river, away from anyone else, Wei-Li explained the situation to him.

  ‘It’s not something we enjoy doing, but we believe that ghosts are souls trapped in limbo, unable to move on for some reason, and we feel we have to do anything in our power to release them. The house is empty, and we aren’t going to steal or damage anything…’

  ‘She thinks ghosts are trapped souls that need to go to the light,’ Mohan corrected. ‘I subscribe to the Stone Tape theory myself.’

  ‘Stone tape?’ Charlie asked. He noticed Kev had grown bored with the conversation already and was somehow managing to play a game on his mobile and pick his nose at the same time.

  ‘It’s the idea,’ said Wei-Li, ‘that ghosts aren’t spirits of the dead, but more like a recording of the people’s energies and emotions – especially powerful ones such as a murder or tragic death. The energies are somehow soaked up by the surroundings – stone, brick, wood – and are triggered into replaying every so often. That’s his theory – it’s just that I know mine’s right.’

  It was the closest Charlie had seen Wei-Li come to anger. She obviously cared deeply about this subject.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because I’ve been in contact with spirits. In ancient China, everyone believed in honouring the spirits of the ancestors. Certain gifted people could communicate with them, a gift that ran in families – my grandfather was one, and he helped me to develop the skill. I’m not very good – it’s like a very bad telephone line where you can’t quite make everything out. But I know it’s true.’

  ‘Whereas my theory is based on proper science,’ Mohan declared flatly.

  Charlie didn’t know who to believe – just that he had a strange urge to punch Mohan on the nose…

  ‘Look, kids,’ grumbled Kev, still playing his game. ‘Are we on for tonight or not?’

  Wei-Li looked to Charlie for his answer.

  Deliberately seeking out ghosts was bad enough, but getting into a house without permission. It was madness, it was ridiculous. And if Wei-Li hadn’t been involved…

  ‘All right – but the first sign of trouble and I’m off.’

  ‘Thanks, Charlie.’

  She gave him a quick hug, and he could feel the imprint of her soft, dainty little hands on his shoulders after she took them away.

  Oh…’ he said as an afterthought.

  ‘What now?’ Kev demanded impatiently.

  ‘We should start with the attic…’

  eleven

  Charlie spent a couple of hours on his own in the cottage, waiting for Dad and Sue to return. He googled ghosts, spirits, the ‘Stone Tape’ theory, but there was just so much stuff out there, so many sites, so many different explanations about what ghosts were or if they even existed, that he began to suffer from information overload and went back to looking at the boats on the river.

  But the Creep’s storeroom was in his line of sight down below, and he couldn’t stop thinking about what connection he had with the ghosts Wei-Li and Mohan believed haunted Rosebud Cottage, Penhale’s old family home. Where did the stolen burial register come into it? Burial registers were for dead people, and ghosts were dead people. Or not. The rug didn’t seem to fit in, though. Was that just a random event? Anyone can take carry an old rug about. But he’d seemed so secretive about it. The storeroom didn’t need a rug – probably wasn’t big enough for that one – and it wasn’t as if he was taking it to a tip or some place to get rid of it.

  He wandered back outside – through the alleyway and out to the harbour. It was bright, but the dark clouds that had never quite gone away were gathering out to sea and seemed to be slowly creeping inland. Then Charlie spotted Dad and Sue down on the beach. He had never really seen them acting naturally together without him; spying on them was kind of a thrill at first, but soon started to feel not quite right. They were holding hands like teenage lovers, casually chatting and looking as happy and relaxed as he had ever seen them. Okay, it was soppy – but then again, they looked kind of right together, and that was painful to admit. The unwanted thought pushed its way into his head that he had been so obsessed with himself that he hadn’t really been thinking of Dad’s happiness. It made him feel selfish in an ugly kind of way, which he was sure he wasn’t, but… Charlie snapped out of it, turning away from them.

  It wasn’t long, though, before they appeared on quayside and spotted him. Dad went into the Lugger to get some drinks, leaving him sitting uncomfortably alone with Sue on a little wall overlooking the beach.

  ‘What do you make of him, then?’ she asked.

  ‘Dad?’ Charlie countered, a little alarmed.

  ‘No, chump – Henry Penhale!’

  ‘He’s weird. Don’t like him.’

  ‘Neither do I. And he’s hiding something.’

  Charlie sat up. ‘What?’

  ‘He loves boasting about Cornelius, basking in the limelight of being the descendant of a local hero – yet there are places he doesn’t want to go when you try to talk to him about it.’

  ‘Now do you believe I saw him rip a page out of the burial register?’

  ‘I always did.’

  ‘Oh… Thanks.’

  ‘I believed you, but it just didn’t make sense for someone who is Mr Local History to go defacing old historical records. I even thought there must be some sort of innocent explanation – maybe he was getting rid of a damaged page with nothing of importance on it or something. But now I have my doubts.’

  Dad arrived with beers for
the adults and a juice for Charlie. ‘Doubts about what?’

  ‘Henry Penhale.’

  ‘I was just looking at a picture of the bloke Cornelius Penhale saved. Old black and white one on the wall of the pub.’

  ‘Am I allowed to go inside and look?’ Charlie asked.

  ‘Sure.’ Dad slid off the wall and handed his beer to Sue. ‘Come on – I’ll show you.’

  There were just a couple of locals sitting at the bar inside the rather dimly lit, olde worlde pub, with its wooden beams and a real fireplace at one end. Old photographs lined the walls – mostly ships and boats on the Fowey River, but a few bearing the faces of local characters. Dad led Charlie to the left of the bar, where above a seat there hung a picture, blotched and faded with age. It featured a rather thin man with a bushy moustache. Although he wore that rather stern expression look that all people in Victorian pictures seemed to have, there was the faintest of smiles on his lips and Charlie suspected he was actually a kindly man. Beside him stood a boy wearing a thick, uncomfortable looking jacket. It seemed as if his hair had been especially plastered into a state of artificial neatness for the picture, and he looked half-bewildered, half-startled to have a camera pointed at him. There was a short, printed caption underneath that had been added in more recent times, though still many years ago:

  Isaac Trewin & his son William the day before departing Polruan on the Rosebud for London in 1856. Mr Trewin was left penniless when a fire destroyed his chandlery shop, then suffered further hardship when the Rosebud foundered on Black Bottle Rock in a storm. Thanks to the heroic efforts of Mr Cornelius Penhale, father and son were saved and able to start their new life in the capital after all.

  ‘That’s funny…’ Sue said with a frown.

  ‘What is?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘It says Isaac Trewin was “left penniless” – but when I was doing my research I kept coming across his name, and I assumed he was well off like Cornelius. He certainly ended up with a thriving chandler’s shop in London – he even opened a second branch. He started a charitable fund to help the widows of the Polruan and Fowey men lost at sea, and he paid for the gravestones of every single person who drowned in the Blackbottle Rock disaster.’