Phil Rickman [Rickman - Night After Night

NIGHT
AFTER
NIGHT

Also by Phil Rickman

THE MERRILY WATKINS SERIES

The Wine of Angels

Midwinter of the Spirit

A Crown of Lights

The Cure of Souls

The Lamp of the Wicked

The Prayer of the Night Shepherd

The Smile of a Ghost

The Remains of an Altar

The Fabric of Sin

To Dream of the Dead

The Secrets of Pain

The Magus of Hay

THE JOHN DEE PAPERS

The Bones of Avalon

The Heresy of Dr Dee

OTHER TITLES

Candlenight

Curfew

The Man in the Moss

December

The Chalice

Night After Night

The Cold Calling

Mean Spirit

Published in hardback in Great Britain in 2014 by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright Phil Rickman, 2014

The moral right of Phil Rickman to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authors imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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

Hardback ISBN: 978 0 85789 869 2
E-book ISBN: 978 0 85789 871 5

Printed in Great Britain.

Corvus
An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd
Ormond House
2627 Boswell Street
London
WC1N 3JZ

www.corvus-books.co.uk

Contents

PART ONE

At the fading of day

It is important to be aware that every ghost story depends on the honesty of those telling it, the accuracy of their memory and the reliability of their interpretation of the circumstances.

Ian Wilson
In Search of Ghosts (1995)

A fine late afternoon in
January and

A HAUNTED HOUSE ?

He wonders what this means, as he moves from dark room to even darker room, in the dust of discarded centuries. What is a haunted house?

Not an easy question. A case, there is, for saying that all houses are haunted and that this is rarely harmful. Everyones home holds the residue of sickness, physical and mental. Every house stores memories of pain and pleasure. Few walls have not absorbed howls of anger, purrs of passion and not all of it normal.

But sickness is rarely infectious after five hundred years or more. Not all memories are active.

And how many of us are normal? He plucks a strand of cobweb from his tweed skirt.

Certainly not him.

The closing hour of a lovely day for the time of year. Outside, the walls of the house are still sun-baked. This is the beauty of Cotswold stone, it seems to store the sun, so that villages look from a distance like uncovered beehives.

A lovely day, a lovely old house from the outside, at least and a lovely woman.

She stands beside him on the steps. Shes wearing a heavy cloak of dark blue wool, ankle-length. The kind of cloak that women must have worn here when the house was young and held fewer memories, active or otherwise. From a distance, in certain lights, you might think she herself was a ghost.

Knap Hall was derelict for decades at a time, she says. Eventually and were talking in the 1970s, I think it was divided up into rented apartments before it became a pub again. With a restaurant, this time. A gastropub in the newer part, not here. Too costly to convert the older rooms, too many restrictions. So the rooms at this end, which are sixteenth century or earlier, have been mainly left alone. Which is good. For us, anyway.

How did they get the people out? he wonders.

Im sorry?

Presumably some of the flats were still tenanted when it was sold for a gastropub.

She shakes her head, doesnt know. Perhaps they didnt have to try too hard, he thinks. Perhaps people couldnt wait to get out.

And what happened with the pub?

Trinity shrugs.

Lot of pubs just close overnight these days, dont they? And it was a bit isolated. And the smoking ban, of course. She smiles her helpless smile. Actually, I dont really know.

He nods. Hes more interested in her mention a few minutes ago, of the house once being a home for maladjusted boys. A lot of anger there, you imagine, and torrenting sexuality.

It needs to be cared for, she says. Dont you think?

He stares out across gardens that became fields again and are now being retamed.

Yes, he says. Im quite sure there are a number of things here that need some care.

He turns, looks beyond the house, to what rises above it, crowned by a stand of Scots pine.

Whats that hill called? Is that the Knap?

A wooden kissing gate lets them into a footway, partly stepped, leading steeply up behind the house, overlooking a walled garden, its bottom wall tight to the hill. In one corner, theres a small stone building with a cross at the apex of its roof.

Domestic chapel?

Used to be. The pub used it as a storeroom. Harrys bought some old pews from one of those reclamation places and were having them installed. Do you think thats a good idea?

And perhaps you should have it blessed. A local priest will probably do it. Perhaps you could find out when it was consecrated. Not as old as the house, I would imagine, from the stonework.

Cant you do it?

He smiles.

Not exactly my tradition, lovely.

When theyre approaching the summit of the hill, he turns to take in the vast view, the setting sun spreading a deep watercolour wash over pastel fields and smoky woodland.

Whats that village over to the left?

Thats Winchcombe, she says. I never know whether its a village or a town.

Ah, yes, so it is. He knows it well enough, drove close to its perimeter to get here today. A large village these days with the heart of a town.

A town in the old sense, a sturdy, working town, untypical of the modern Cotswolds. It has a strange history of growing tobacco.

All very old round here, she says. And nothing barbarically new to spoil it. Not for miles and miles.

Only the barbarically old. If barbaric is the word.

Im sorry?

Belas Knap. If this little hill isnt known as the Knap, it probably suggests the name of the house links with the Neolithic longbarrow.

I suppose. Its somewhere over there. She points vaguely at a wood behind the hill. Only been once. A longer walk than I imagined. Its just like an odd little hill. As if its erupted from the corner of the field. Or its landed from somewhere. Doesnt look five thousand years old with all that new stonework.