The Tale Of Twelve Chimneys ALTHOUGH the brooding outline of Twelve Chimneys had scared me ever since I came to stay with Aunt May at Dunglane Village a week ago, I couldn't seem to keep away from it.
Like this evening. I'd spent a lovely afternoon at Melverton, fuddling round the boutiques, yet when I got back to Dunglane I just had to get out by the War Memorial and walk up the weedy drive to stand in front of that derelict pile.
It was an early Victorian building, but I thought it looked like a raddled old woman in electric curlers, with those long-dead smoke-stacks springing from the roof-tops. A crouching, venomous old woman, mourning her lost beauty.
"Hey there!"
I jumped violently.
The moon swept from a cloud and I noticed a grinning, dark-haired girl sitting on an iron fence, about two feet away.
Hey," I grinned in relief. "I didn't know anyone else was here."
"Oh," she sprang lightly into the long grass and came towards me. "I suppose it's silly, but I like to look at the old place by moonlight. My folks have lived here for years and this was the most important house in the village once."
I fell into step beside her and we continued up the shabby drive.
"Yes, I know," I said." It was Squire Montey's home. My Aunt May's great-gran was cook there, until... it happened."
The girl looked up at the moon-grey windows, her black hair weaving patterns in the moonlight, hands in the pockets of her grubby white shift.
"You mean the chimney sweep getting killed?"
"Yes. Stuck in a fall of soot in the chimney for days my aunt says. Old Montey didn't worry about the loss of the child sweep, but odd things went on in the house after that they said. The old miser was glad to get out."
The girl's dark eyes sparkled mischievously.
"What a harrowing tale!" she said. "Come on, Aunt May's niece, my name's Sally. Let's go in and see what we can find."
My skin prickled. "Oh, we can't... " But she was already pushing open the creaking, worm-eaten door.
"There's a staircase straight ahead," she said huskily." Come on, er ..."
"Joan. Joan Broadlink."
Her excitement was infectious. Her long, lace-up boots made no sound in the thick dust of the staircase and I crept behind her, round the bend, across the echoing landing, to a deep alcove by a red and blue stained glass window ...
"Aagh!
Sally's white dress fluttered along the corridor, but I was transfixed at the top of the stairs.
A Black form stood in front of the coloured window, its hands raised. It was clutching something — a brush, was it?
I screamed again and the black form answered:
"Woo-hoo! Woo-hoo!"
"Sally! Sally!"
My foot slipped on the dusty stair-tread and I seemed to hear distant laughter as I plunged forward. The last thing I saw before I fell was the black figure lunging towards me...
I could only have been knocked out for a second. When I came to I was lying in the hall, with a fair-haired boy bending over me with a lighted match in his hand. Of Sally there was no sign ...
"Gosh, I'm sorry I scared you," he said, taking a bit of candle from his pocket and lighting it. "I found an owl with a broken wing outside last week — only a baby. So I was nursing it up there and feeding it every night, in the dark, because it was scared. Silly really, as they can see in the dark anyway."
I managed to smile in spite of my bruised head.
"Thank goodness you're solid," I said. "I thought..." He grinned.
"You thought I was the ghostly sweep who tries to lure people to their deaths?" he quoted ponderously. "Not me. Didn't you know it was a female sweep who got killed? Sally Roane her name was."
"N-no, I didn't know...
I looked past him, up the stairs to the great West window, just as Sally's white smock faded from view and her mocking laughter became the sighing of the trees outside.
***
—
Spellbound #20, 5 February 1977
