The Woman In Black Read Free

my own armchair, drewit back a little from the full blaze of the fire, and began the protracted and soothing business of lighting a pipe. As I did so, I became aware that I had interrupted the others in the midst of a lively conversation, and that Oliver and Will at least were restless to continue.
    ‘Well,’ I said, through the first, cautious puffs at my tobacco, ‘and what’s all this?’
    There was a further pause,and Esmé shook her head, smiling over her embroidery.
    ‘Come …’
    Then Oliver got to his feet and began to go about the room rapidly switching off every lamp, save the lights upon the Christmas tree at the far end, so that, when he returned to his seat, we had only the immediate firelight by which to see one another, and Esmé was obliged to lay down her sewing – not without a murmur of protest.
    ‘May as well do the job properly,’ Oliver said with some satisfaction.
    ‘Oh, you boys …’
    ‘Now come on, Will, your turn, isn’t it?’
    ‘No, Edmund’s.’
    ‘Ah-ha,’ said the youngest of the Ainley brothers, in an odd, deep voice. ‘I could an’ if I would!’
    ‘ Must we have the lights out?’ Isobel spoke as if to much smaller boys.
    ‘Yes, Sis, we must, that’s if you want to get the authentic atmosphere.’
    ‘But I’m not sure that I do.’
    Oliver gave a low moan. ‘Get on with it then, someone.’
    Esmé leaned over towards me. ‘They are telling ghost stories.’
    ‘Yes,’ said Will, his voice unsteady with both excitement and laughter. ‘Just the thing for Christmas Eve. It’s an ancient tradition!’
    ‘The lonely country house, the guests huddled around the fireside in a darkened room, the wind howling at thecasement …’ Oliver moaned again.
    And then came Aubrey’s stolid, good-humoured tones. ‘Better get on with it then.’ And so they did, Oliver, Edmund and Will vying with one another to tell the horridest, most spine-chilling tale, with much dramatic effect and mock-terrified shrieking. They outdid one another in the far extremes of inventiveness, piling agony upon agony. They told of dripping stonewalls in uninhabited castles and of ivy-clad monastery ruins by moonlight, of locked inner rooms and secret dungeons, dank charnel houses and overgrown graveyards, of footsteps creaking upon staircases and fingers tapping at casements, of howlings andshriekings, groanings and scuttlings and the clanking of chains, of hooded monks and headless horsemen, swirling mists and sudden winds, insubstantialspectres and sheeted creatures, vampires and bloodhounds, bats and rats and spiders, of men found at dawn and women turned white-haired and raving lunatic, and of vanished corpses and curses upon heirs. The stories grew more and more lurid, wilder and sillier, and soon the gasps and cries merged into fits of choking laughter, as each one, even gentle Isobel, contributed more ghastly detail.
    At first, I was amused, indulgent, but as I sat on, listening, in the firelight, I began to feel set apart from them all, an outsider to their circle. I was trying to suppress my mounting unease, to hold back the rising flood of memory.
    This was a sport, a high-spirited and harmless game among young people, for the festive season, and an ancient tradition, too, as Will had rightly said, therewas nothing to torment and trouble me, nothing of which I could possibly disapprove. I did not want to seem a killjoy, old and stodgy and unimaginative, I longed to enter into what was nothing more nor less than good fun. I fought a bitter battle within myself, my head turned away from the firelight so that none of them should chance to see my expression which I knew began to show signs of my discomfiture.

    And then, to accompany a final, banshee howl from Edmund, the log that had been blazing on the hearth collapsed suddenly and, after sending up a light spatter of sparks and ash, died down so that there was near-darkness. And then silence in the room. I shuddered. I wanted to get up and