Maddie looked up at me for a moment, and I had the strangest feeling of her black button eyes boring into mine, and then she turned and scampered after Ellie, crying out, “Follow me! Follow me!”
The path led down and down, away from the house, growing more uneven by the second. Once it had been herringbone brick, but now the bricks had cracked in the frost and grown loose, some of them missing altogether. In the distance I could see a brick wall, about six feet high, with a wrought iron metal gate, which seemed to be where the children were heading.
“Is that the edge of the grounds?” I called after them. “Hold up, I don’t want you going out onto the moors.”
They stopped and waited for me; Ellie had her hands on her hips and was panting, her little face flushed.
“It’s a garden,” she said. “It’s got a wall around it, like a room but no roof.”
“That sounds exciting,” I said. “Like the Secret Garden. Have you ever read that?”
“Of course she hasn’t, she’s not old enough to read chapter books,” Maddie said, repressively. “But we watched it on TV.”
We had drawn level with the wall now, and I could see what Ellie meant. It was a crumbling redbrick wall, slightly taller than I was, that seemed to be enclosing one corner of the grounds, forming a rectangular section quite separate from the rest of the landscaping. It was the kind of structure that might easily have enclosed a kitchen garden—protecting delicate herbs and fruit trees from frost—but the trees and creepers I could see emerging above the high walls didn’t look at all edible.
I tried the handle of the gate.
“It’s locked.” Through the twining metalwork I could see a wild, overgrown mass of bushes and creepers, some kind of statue partly obscured by greenery. “What a shame, it looks very exciting in there.”
“It looks locked,” Ellie said eagerly, “but Maddie and I know a secret way of getting inside.”
“I’m not sure—” I began, but before I could finish, she wound her little hand through the intricate metal fretwork, through a space far too narrow to admit even a fine-boned adult’s hand, and did something I could not see to the far side of the lock. The gate sprang open.
“Wow!” I said, genuinely impressed. “How did you do that?”
“It’s not very hard.” Ellie was flushed with pride. “There’s a catch on the inside.”
Gently I pushed the gate open, listening to the hinges squeal, and pushed Petra inside, thrusting aside the trailing fronds of some creeper that was hanging overhead. The leaves brushed my face, tickling my skin with an almost nettlish sensation. Maddie ducked in behind me, trying not to let the leaves trail in her face, and Ellie came in too. There was something mischievous about her expression, and I wondered why Bill and Sandra kept this place locked.
Inside, the walls protected the plants from the exposed position of the rest of the grounds, and the contrast to the muted heathers and trees outside, and the austerity of the moors beyond, was startling. There were lush evergreen bushes studded with berries of all types, overgrown tangled creepers, and a few flowers struggling to survive beneath the onslaught. I recognized a few—hellebores and snowberries springing up from between dark-leaved laurels, and what I thought might be a laburnum up ahead. As we turned a corner, we passed underneath an ancient-looking yew so old it formed a tunnel over the path, its strange, tubular berries crunching underfoot. Its leaves had poisoned the ground, and nothing grew underneath its spread. There were more greenhouses in here, I saw, though they were smaller, still with enough glass in their broken frames to have built up an impressive amount of condensation. The inside of the glass was blotched with green lichen and mold, so thickly that I could barely see the remains of the plants inside, though some struggled up through the broken panes of the roof.
Four brick paths quartered the garden, meeting in a small circle in the center, where the statue stood. It was so covered in ivy and other creepers that it was hard to make out, but as I drew nearer, brushing aside some of the foliage, I saw that it was a woman, thin and emaciated and broken down, her clothes ragged, her face skull-like, her blank stone eyes fixing mine with an accusing stare. Her cheeks were scored with what looked like scratches, and when I peered closer I saw that the nails on her skeletal hands were long and pointed.
“God,” I said, taken back. “What a horrible statue. Who on earth would put up something like that?” But there was no answer. The two little girls had disappeared into the thicket of greenery, and I could not see them. Peering closer I saw that there was a name on the pedestal she crouched on. Achlys. Was it some kind of memorial?
All of a sudden I felt a violent desire to get out of this overgrown nightmarish tangle of plants, out to the open air of the mountains and grounds.
“Maddie!” I called sharply. “Ellie, where are you?”
No answer came, and I suppressed a momentary unease.
“Maddie! We’re going to have lunch now. Let’s go and find a spot.”
They waited, just long enough for me to start feeling serious panic, and then there was a burst of giggles and both children broke cover and pelted down the path in front of me, towards the gate and the cool, clean air outside.
“Come on,” Maddie shouted over her shoulder. “We’ll show you the burn.”