Free THE RIDDLE OF RAMSEY HALLS by Pippa Hart Page B

the covers once again.
    “Sleep
forever,”

CHAPTER 3
    The rooms of
Ramsey Halls were always cold at night, not that I would have
noticed. Somehow though, I rather missed the freezing temperatures,
for even being uncomfortable meant that you were alive. It didn’t
matter whether it was warm or not but rather more important to feel
it.
    It was the
endless and vast expanse of nothingness that was the most difficult
to bear; to look at food and feel no hunger, to stay awake for ever
but never grow tired or to hear a joke and not find it amusing. The
only thing I felt was sadness, a deep melancholy that only
motherhood could soothe.
    But my chances
of that were now gone, obliterated on the day my life ended. It
seemed so long ago now, but not long ago enough. The stairs made no
noise as I descended them, but if you were to pass me by you would
feel a cold breeze, like frigid breath tickling at the side of your
face.
    I’d heard
mutterings before, pieces of overheard conversation where people
mentioned feeling my presence. They’d often run to one another as
though I was attacking them. Their hands would be shaking, their
skin pale as they spoke of the mysterious gust of air in the attic
or the feeling of being watched. I was often an anecdote at
dinner.
    “Oh, have you
heard the spirit in the attic was knocking on the floor once
again?”
    And they’d all
laugh and shriek with goose bumps rising up their arms. Once or
twice they even tried to communicate with me via some silly board.
But I was angered by their frivolous entertainment and I flew the
glass and board off the table, shattering it to pieces in the
fireplace. Yet that only served to make me more of an interest to
them.
    It infuriated
me and so now I tried to keep as quiet as possible. I showed myself
to no one but the little boy and only came at night. And so on this
night I made my way down into the great hall and out into the
darkness.
    The stars were
shining bright with the clouds having departed long before. It
would have been a clear and chilled night was I to feel it, but I
gazed at the beauty of the sky nonetheless. It was a short walk to
my destination, one I’d travelled many times.
    With my boots
treading in the rocky mud I travelled fast, my eyes having adjusted
to the dark. When my feet reached the end of the lane and my hands
lay upon the stone wall, I reached up on tip toes to see
further.
    “Are you
there?” I whispered into the wind.
    “Why must you
ask yet again?” the voice was gruff and old with a distinct
grumpiness.
    I creaked open
the gate, the noise travelling across the moor.
    “You’re late
tonight,” the figure coughed and stepped out from behind the shadow
of a mausoleum.
    “I had to care
for the boy,” I explained.
    “Care? I
surmise you were trying to kill him once again,” he spat.
    “I have my
reasons you know,” I tried to protest my innocence.
    “Well…. I want
no part in knowing anymore,” and the old man shuffled off.
    I watched him
as his shape merged with the shadows of the gravestones, his
cumbersome frame weighing heavy in the earth.
    As I did every
night I walked the half a mile across the marsh to the local
graveyard. The one where I lay or at least my body did. It is also
where my grandfather rests, or rather climbs out the ground every
night to meet me.
    He was now at
the far end of the yard, his grey hair like icy tendrils in the
wind.
    “Hurry up
Mildred,” he gestured for me to walk faster to our usual place.
    Once I arrived
I saw my seat was already made up. It was the upturned stone of
Ephraim Wilkins, a long dead theatre director who had perished,
like so many, under the influence of the coughing disease. I saw my
dear grandpa had laid out the usual velvet cushion for me that I
loved so much.
    “Why must you
sit on that thing? You can’t even feel the cold of the stone?” he’d
ask with bitterness in his voice.
    “It’s
sentimental,” was all I’d say.
    And it was, for
it belonged to my