The Pit

for David

1948 – 1986

in loving memory

Take him, earth, for cherishing

“Ring a ring o’ roses,

A pocket full of posies,

Atishoo, Atishoo,

We all fall down!”

COVER

TITLE PAGE

DEDICATION

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

FROM THE PAGES OF HISTORY

AFTERWORD

KEEP READING

ALSO BY THE AUTHOR

COPYRIGHT

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

CHAPTER ONE

Oliver Wright was walking home from the bus stop with his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the ground. You never knew what you might find in a London street. He’d picked a five pound note up once, all screwed up like an old sweet paper. He didn’t get much pocket money, and even for that he had to do jobs. That five pounds had been riches.

As he turned the corner into Thames Terrace a cold wind blew up suddenly from the river and made him prickle with cold. It felt like January, not June, and the coldest, wettest summer he could ever remember. July would be worse, August worse still because there’d be nothing to do, and no summer holiday. His father was in hospital, having a hip operation, and his mother was fully occupied, running the house like an army camp. He thought back wistfully to other holidays, several of which he’d spent with his cousins, Prill and Colin Blakeman. When those three got together odd and frightening things happened. Oliver and his curious hunches about spooks and hauntings usually started off as a bit of a joke, but he was the one who always got to the bottom of things, the one who always rooted out the reason for these strange adventures of theirs. Nothing interesting was going to happen this year though, not if he’d got to spend the summer all on his own.

The Wrights lived at Number Nine, the shabbiest house of all in a gloomy-looking old terrace. It was painted mud brown, and was full of old people, and it belonged to a special society that provided homes for the elderly. Oliver thought it was a ridiculous house for them to choose because it was so very tall and narrow, with fifty-seven stairs between the cellar and the attic. The old people never went down to the cellar, of course. It was infested with spiders and running with damp, and the attic was just a storage area, with one tiny bedroom for him.

He kicked gloomily at a stone and watched it bounce into the gutter. He liked their house with its views of the Thames and his bedroom under the roof, it was home. But on a wet Friday afternoon, with the whole weekend yawning drearily ahead, he wished there was another family in the street. Nobody lived there now, except the Wrights, and a few young trendies with their sports cars and their window boxes. The buildings opposite were old warehouses, shut up and abandoned, and at the bottom of their garden there was only the river. One end of the terrace looked out on to a little egg-shaped graveyard, neatly grassed over and raised up, almost two feet higher than the pavement. Its church, St Olave-le-Strand, had been pulled down last year, even though his mother had led the local campaign to save it. She enjoyed protests. Beyond the graveyard there was a demolition site filled with excavators and concrete mixers, and an enormous crane that swung an iron ball against crumbling walls and sent them tottering into dust. A huge warehouse was being pulled down and a new office development called River Reach built on the site. That would be something else for his mother to complain about. Why did she have to be so awkward?

Oliver was adopted, as Mrs Wright never failed to tell people. It was as if she thought they might ask difficult questions if she didn’t explain – she looked rather too old to be the mother of such a young boy. He didn’t much like the parents he’d landed with. Mother, with her iron-grey hair and wrinkled face, always so busy ruling Number Nine, and Father, so silent and always buried in exercise books, peering out at him occasionally from behind thick glasses. They were kind enough, in a remote sort of way, but they weren’t really tuned in to his world at all, and Oliver was lonely.

As he walked past Number Five he stopped to look at a black Porsche parked outside. It belonged to a young couple who had moved in last week. He smiled to himself. A car like that would mean parties, and doors banging in the middle of the night – another thing for his mother to complain about. He was just bending down to have a look through the window when a sudden noise at the end of the street jerked him upright again. It was a man’s voice, shouting hysterically, then other voices and someone yelling “Hang on mate, for Gawd’s sake, wait can’t you!” Then, round the corner and running along past the graveyard, came somebody he knew quite well. Ted Hoskins, who worked on the demolition site.

Ted was over six feet tall, and beefy, and he wore very heavy boots, but he came tearing down past Oliver like a bat out of hell. His eyeballs were rolled up, right back into his head, horribly, like something dead, and there was an awful noise coming out of his mouth, half a groan, half a scream.

“Ted?” Oliver shouted, stepping into the street as two men from the site pelted past him, then “Ted!” He was always nice to Oliver, and he sometimes gave him things they found on the site. But now it was as if he’d gone both blind and deaf. He ran on, struggling to shake off the arms that clutched at him as the two younger men caught up, only stopping when he was brought down to his knees by a flying rugby tackle.

As Ted collapsed, and the two workmen bent over him, three more came hurtling along the pavement. Oliver crouched behind the Porsche, listening hard. He could hear the noise Ted was making quite clearly, and it chilled him. It was a moaning, sobbing noise, more like the helpless crying of a child than the voice of a grown man. He crept out from the car, stole along the pavement, and peered through a jungle of blue-denimed legs at the man lying in the middle of the road.

Ted Hoskins looked dead. His eyes were still open and staring, and his mouth had flopped open too, but the noises had stopped now and it was uncannily quiet. All Oliver could hear were the gulls mewing over the muddy river and, somewhere in the City, a muffled bell was ringing.

“Give him air,” someone shouted. “The man needs air. Don’t crowd him.” Oliver recognized the voice at once. It was Rick, the bad-tempered foreman. He’d told him off several times for hanging round the site. “I’m getting the boss,” he said. “Throw a coat over him, somebody, and leave him where he is. We need a doctor for this. I’ll go and phone.”

As he turned round he almost fell over Oliver who was crowding round with the others, unable to take his eyes from Ted’s face. “Clear off, can’t you!” Rick yelled. “Can’t you see the poor bloke’s ill? Make yourself scarce, and quick, or you’ll be in trouble. Now get!”

Oliver stood upright, and opened his mouth, but no words came out. He wanted to say he could help, that his mother was a trained nurse and that Rick could use their phone, but he couldn’t speak. It was Ted’s face. The look in those awful, rolled-up eyes had struck terror into him. Whatever had frightened the big kindly workman, down at the site, had stretched out a hand and was touching him too. Not just touching either, but plunging right down, down to the dark buried deep inside him, to the place where his worst fears were.

Everyone at school knew that Oliver Wright was a bit of a weirdo, always borrowing other people’s horror comics and taking them home to read in secret, always taking the creepiest books out of the library; and he’d never denied that he liked grisly things. What he felt now though was of a different order from all that. As he stared into Ted’s face, he found himself remembering the worst moments of his life.

He remembered the day one of his mother’s old ladies had died in her bedsitter, and how he’d seen the shiny coffin being carried down the stairs. He’d been told to stay in the flat that morning but he’d peeped, through the banisters, and he’d thought he’d heard the body, rolling about inside. Then he saw the damp cellar under the house, mouldy and reeking, where he was sometimes sent to look for jam jars, and he remembered the terrible day when his father had switched the light off, not knowing he was there, and how he’d been left all alone in the pitch dark, crawling about and unable to find the steps.

The look on Ted’s face was about the darkness. As he stared at him, Oliver felt he’d been snatched away from the dull familiar street, with the rain falling and the knot of men still huddled in the road, plucked out of the dreary present and swept back, to the secret horrors and fears he struggled with at night, when the rest of the house slept. A deep silence enveloped him now, broken only by the curious, muffled tolling of that single bell. The very sound lapped him in darkness, and Oliver felt suffocated. Whatever had sent Ted Hoskins screaming down the street was here too, inside him. It was like a physical weight, dragging him down. “Did you hear me?” Rick was saying, and he shook him hard. “Do you want this boot in your backside?” But Oliver was already running, running away from the blackness, down the dingy street, not stopping till he was safe on his own doorstep, with the thin, cold rain dripping down his neck.

CHAPTER TWO

He woke next morning to the sound of water drumming on the roof. He got out of bed and lifted up a corner of one curtain; the sky was the colour of pea soup. There’d been thunder in the night, followed by rain, the kind that set in with a vengeance then fell steadily, hour after hour. The demolition site would certainly be deserted this morning but it would also be a sea of mud. His mother might ask awkward questions if she saw him sliding off down the street, so he decided to postpone his visit to the site for a bit. It had been a bad night, full of horrible dreams about cellars and coffins. He didn’t really feel up to tackling his mother.

On his way down to the kitchen, two floors below, he stopped on the narrow half-landing and looked through a front window. The sky looked several shades darker now, and it was still pouring down, but someone was out there, standing quite still on the opposite pavement, staring up at Number Nine.

Oliver pressed his nose to the glass and stared back. All the houses in Thames Terrace had tiny front gardens where nothing much grew, but theirs was special. Right in the middle was a massive oak tree, so wide that the front railings actually bulged out, over the pavement. It was supposed to be nearly four hundred years old, an “historic tree”, according to Oliver’s father, and there was a little bronze plaque on the trunk, telling you all about it.

Perhaps the person in the road was a tree expert. Oliver couldn’t think of anything else interesting about their house. He stayed at the window, his pale cheeks flattened against the cold glass, and watched the figure move a few steps along the pavement. He could see it properly now.

It was an old man, very tall and spindly, with a lot of white hair blowing out from under a large black hat. He wore a very long black coat, black trousers and black shoes, and he was carrying a stick.

A funny cold feeling began to creep down Oliver’s spine, and his dark dreams of the previous night started coming back again. This old man didn’t belong to Thames Terrace at all; perhaps he was a ghost.

He shut his eyes tight and counted slowly to ten. When he opened them the tall black figure would have disappeared, flitted back to the world of make-believe, where it belonged. But when Oliver looked again the man was still there, pacing up and down the pavement, still looking up at the house, then down towards the little graveyard where the old people sometimes sat out on green benches.

Oliver watched him. Looking carefully both ways, and leaning on his stick, the gangly black figure crossed the road cautiously and disappeared into a green fuzz of leaves and branches. Seconds later there was a loud banging at the front door.

He peered down the stairwell and saw his mother come out of their kitchen. A smell of bacon and tomatoes wafted out with her. Muttering to herself, and wiping her hands on a tea towel, she began to go down the stairs. Oliver followed silently, and stopped when he reached his usual vantage point, a little niche at the top of the first flight of steps where he could stay safely hidden behind a large plant stand.

The old man had a thin wavery voice but he spoke with a very refined accent. When he said “Good Morning” it sounded like a TV announcer, and he actually raised his hat. Oliver’s mother would approve. She was always nagging him about good manners and good speech.

“I’d like one of your rooms,” he was saying politely. “I understand you have a vacancy. I’ve filled in the necessary papers, and I have my cheque all made out. How soon could I move in? I don’t want to inconvenience you, of course …”

“Well, I don’t know about this at all,” Oliver’s mother was saying, and she sounded distinctly annoyed.

Raising his large black hat a second time, the old man had already walked past her, into the hall. He’d produced a sheaf of papers from inside his coat and he was fanning them out, under her nose. “The Society is quite happy for me to have the room,” he said, “if you’re in agreement, of course.”

“Well, I’m not sure that I am, Mr – what did you say your name was?”

“I didn’t. It’s Verney. Thomas Verney.”

“I have to explain, Mr Verney, that this is rather irregular, you see—”

“Dr Verney. Not a medical doctor, you understand, a Doctor of Science. I used to teach at the University. That’s all behind me now, of course. I’m retired.”

“I see.”

Oliver peeped round the plant stand. His mother’s voice had changed slightly. She’d put her glasses on now and she was inspecting the papers more carefully. He knew just what she was thinking, that a well-spoken retired professor from London University could give Number Nine a touch of class.

“As I say,” Mrs Wright began again, handing back the papers, “the usual procedure is for a new resident to come along to the house first, with someone from the Society. The room may not be to your liking, you see, and in any case we may not get on with each other. It’s a very small community, Dr Verney, and if people don’t get on …”

“Oh, I’m sure I shall be very happy here,” the old man interrupted, looking pointedly at the stairs. “I’m familiar with this street, you see, and I’ve always wanted to live here. So I wonder if you’d be so kind as to let me see the room?”

“As a matter of fact, it isn’t quite ready,” Oliver’s mother said firmly, standing with her back to the staircase. “I’ve not quite finished dealing with the last resident’s belongings.”

The old man wasn’t in the least put off. On the contrary, he started to ask a lot of questions about the house, questions which made him sound just a bit peculiar. He seemed obsessed with hygiene for one thing. Were there any rats or mice in the house, he wanted to know, with it being so near the Thames.

“Rats? I can assure you, Dr Verney,” Mrs Wright informed him frostily, “I’ve seen nothing like that in this house, not in all the years I’ve lived here, and in any case, Mrs McDougall, one of my residents, has a cat. I don’t care for cats myself, but they do deter rodents.”

Oliver smiled to himself when he heard that. Mrs McDougall’s Binkie was fat and spoiled. He wouldn’t recognize a mouse if he saw one. And if he saw a rat he’d probably run a mile.

When he heard his mother coming up the stairs, with the old man behind her, he made himself scarce. As he let himself through their own front door he could still hear her going on about the empty room being “by no means ready”, and about the Society’s rules and regulations. So he was a bit surprised when she came up half an hour later and told him she’d given Dr Verney the room after all. “Well, if he settles in, it could be pleasant company for your father,” she told him. “He’s a nicely-spoken old man, highly educated of course, a real gentleman. It makes quite a change from Mr Porter.”

“That wouldn’t be difficult, would it?” Oliver grunted. Old Joe Porter occupied a large front room on the ground floor. He flew into violent rages when people failed to wipe the top of the sauce bottle, and he sometimes came home drunk from the pub. “When’s he coming then?”

“Tomorrow. I explained about church but he said that Sunday was the only day his daughter could drive him here with his things. I told him not to arrive before twelve. We’ll be back by then. There won’t be very much to carry in anyway, only the necessities. I’ve explained about the month’s trial period … Dr Thomas Verney … I must write it down.”

Thomas Verney. It sounded old. The boys at his school were called Kevin, Mark, and Lee, and they had surnames like Bates and Whittaker. The cold, creepy feeling he’d had, when he’d spotted the old man through the window, hadn’t quite gone. Why on earth did he want to live at Number Nine anyway, with its fifty-seven stairs and its view of old warehouses? And how did he know there was an empty room? Oliver’s mother hadn’t told him.

Next day, as they walked back from church, the gang from the nearby flats were out in force as usual. Oliver always dreaded going past them. In two years’ time he’d be at their school and if he hadn’t grown a few inches by then …

The gang sniggered and made rude signs at his mother’s shapeless brown hat. If only she knew how daft she looked, marching along with her Bible under one arm and his hand tucked firmly under the other. On seeing the gang Oliver shook free and pelted down Thames Terrace.

Dr Verney had already arrived at Number Nine, but there was no sign of his daughter, and no car. The front door was open and he was trying to pull a small tea-chest up the front steps, into the hall. It was crammed with books and it obviously weighed a ton.

“I thought we’d agreed that you should just bring the minimum, Dr Verney,” Mrs Wright reminded him, eyeing the chest. Books were dust-traps, they’d got far too many in their own flat, and her new cleaner might object.

“But I must have my books around me, Mrs Wright.” The old man was very polite but very firm. “Apart from those I’ve only got a small suitcase.” And in two minutes he’d disappeared into his new bedsitter, and shut the door. They could hear him bumping around, then water running into a basin. “He’s washing his hands already,” thought Oliver. “He’s obsessed with rats and mice, and keeping clean. He might have good manners and a posh voice, but underneath he’s crazy.”

His mother was still staring up at the first floor landing. She was lost for words – an unusual state for her.

“Shut the door will you, Oliver,” she said, irritably. “It’s blowing a gale in here. Some summer we’re having; I wish it’d warm up a bit. There’s no sign of his daughter, I don’t suppose? I’d have liked a word with her.”

Oliver went outside again and peered down the street. It was deserted apart from a young man in jeans and sneakers, lovingly washing the black Porsche; all its windows were open, and a radio was on full blast.

He put his hand on the door knob; he’d better get inside quick, or his mother would start complaining. Then he saw something. On the peeling mud-brown paint of their front door someone had daubed a bright red cross.

The paint was still wet and sticky, and running down the door in streaks. “What on earth,” began his mother, coming out and seeing it. She looked down the street suspiciously, at the man cleaning his car, then she looked the other way, towards the Silk Merchant’s house, the ancient, gabled shop that the tourists sometimes came to photograph. There were no signs of life at all, apart from rubbish blowing about and an empty Coke can rolling in the gutter.

“Well, we know who’s responsible for this, don’t we?” she said angrily, folding her arms and staring at the crude red cross, “and they won’t get away with it either.”

“Who?” said Oliver.

“Those louts from the flats, of course. They must have done it while we were out at church. I’m going inside to phone the police. They’ll sort them out. It’s an absolute disgrace.”

Oliver lay awake for hours that night. Every time he drifted towards sleep his muddled, troubled thoughts tugged him back to consciousness. He was getting frightened. First Ted Hoskins appeared to have gone off his head, and had run screaming down their street, then this peculiar old man had turned up out of the blue. Now some yobbos had daubed their house with red paint. Oliver didn’t like it at all. His mother was always nagging him, about the creepy books he read, and about his curious obsession with grisly things. “You can have too much imagination, Oliver,” she was always telling him. But it wasn’t imagination; he knew something was wrong.

The police had interviewed the gang at the flats and they’d denied everything. “Well, they would, wouldn’t they?” his mother had informed the young sergeant. “Of course they did it, it sticks out a mile.”

“But why paint a cross, Mrs Wright?” the man had said nervously.

“Because we’re churchgoers, of course. They’re always on the streets when my son and I go to morning service.”

His mother was going to scrape the front door first thing tomorrow morning. But Oliver was haunted with the idea that she would never actually manage to get the paint off. However hard she rubbed, that awful red cross would stay.

He drifted into unconsciousness at last with the sound of a muffled bell tolling in his head. That was odd too, because it sounded quite near. The only church he knew of round here was St Olave-le-Strand, and they’d pulled that down months ago.

CHAPTER THREE

He set off for school early next day because he wanted to call in at the demolition site on the way to the bus. His mother was already busy on the front door, hacking away viciously with a rusty old scraper from his father’s toolbox. She’d got all the red paint off but the cross still showed through. It was a sandy-white now, because she’d scraped down to bare wood.

“The Society will just have to get it repainted,” she said. “They can’t put it off any longer.” Oliver slid off while she was still talking. At least the awful red cross had gone and the weather had improved too; it was actually quite warm. As he walked down the sunlit street, his fears of last night seemed slightly ridiculous. Perhaps Dr Verney was just an ordinary old man; all his mother’s residents had their odd little ways.

At the site, most of the men were in T-shirts, and a few had stripped to the waist. Oliver stood by a huge pile of rusty pipes and watched them working. After making sure that the foreman wasn’t anywhere around, he walked over to Geoff Lucas, one of his favourites. The whole site was marked off into sections by posts strung together with lengths of orange tape. “Is this where you are going to start excavating?” he asked Geoff, secretly admiring his suntan, and his big rippling muscles. Why did he have to be so puny and small? Why couldn’t he grow?