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“All right. Your wish is my command.”
My wonderful new companion was as good as his word. The next time I sat down at the piano, I effortlessly played Liszt’sMephisto Waltz No1from start to finish without even breaking a sweat. I was channelling Erasmus’ energy through my fingertips, and he was controlling my every movement. As my hands ran up and down the piano keys, it was as if the composition was being performed through muscle memory alone, no sheet music required.
A fiendishly difficult piece to play, old Mr Fischer, my music teacher, was astounded and simply could not believe it. I had never seen my mother so happy. Giddy with joy, I started to think that letting Erasmus into my life was the best decision I’d ever made.
At first, everything was great. My French and Latin came on in leaps and bounds as I found I could now speak both fluently and my vocabulary in general broadened under Erasmus’ influence. My governess declared me a child prodigy and had it not been for my appearance, no doubt there would have been arrangements made to show me off to society.
Then there were the little day-to-day things which Erasmus did to make life easier for me. Whenever Beatrix asked me to tidy my room, all I had to do was snap my fingers, and all my toys floated back to where they belonged. With the powers bestowed upon me, I was able to move inanimate objects, just by willing it to happen. All I had to do was look at a wardrobe, and it would move positions. It was truly wonderous and I found my new abilities both exciting and liberating.
Then things began to go wrong.
My new friend started to make mischief. At nights, Erasmus would make the bed shake, waking up all the servants. Sometimes he would move chairs and tables around, completely rearranging the furniture in a room in a way which left everyone feeling unsettled. Another time, the cook narrowly escaped with his life after he was attacked by a succession of carving knives that had jumped out from the drying rack and pinned him to the wall. Then there was an incident where the maid swore blind she had been nearly strangled by vines in the garden which had suddenly come alive as she watered the plants.
Of course, Erasmus thought all this was terribly funny, and saw it as a game, but I didn’t. He was beginning to upset the people I cared about, and I begged him to stop, but he wouldn’t. He told me I was being a spoilsport, that this was all just a little game where no one really got hurt.
Soon there were murmurings of a ghost in the house and bit by bit our hired help began to leave the premises. Nobody wanted to work in a haunted house and no matter what she did, Beatrix found she could never retain anyone for longer than a couple of weeks. Eventually, even my governess had enough of the spooky goings-on and handed in her notice.
My mother was beside herself. She didn’t believe in the haunted house theory, but at the same time, she had to admit that the atmosphere in the house had changed significantly. There was a creeping sense of dread hanging over everything that hadn’t been there before, which I turned a blind eye to.
Obviously, I knew Erasmus was the culprit. I knew he brought a blanket of darkness with him wherever he went, but I didn’t want to accept it. He was my only friend and I needed him to be around, no matter what the cost. After what had happened with Trinity, I didn’t want to lose somebody else that was special to me.
And all throughout proceedings, I remained silent about my invisible friend. I didn’t say a word to anybody. Not to my mother, not to Aunt Priscilla. Nobody knew I was the source of the strange happenings. Nobody knew who was really responsible for the seemingly supernatural events and that was the way I intended to keep it. Erasmus had sworn me to secrecy and there was no way I would ever go back on that promise.
By spring, things got so bad that only the butler Hobbs and the housekeeper, Mrs Bullivant, remained in our service. Nobody else could cope with living in a house with such a volatile, haunting atmosphere and a violent ghost on the loose. Rumours began to circulate in the nearby village that there was something very wrong in Claremont Hall and it got to the point where even the postman was wary of approaching the place.
Things came to a head one rainswept evening when my father returned home from Lebanon. Already in a foul mood, I could smell the alcohol on his breath the second he arrived in the house. Within an hour, he and my mum were fighting like cats and dogs. Hiding at the top of the stairs, I caught snippets of their argument. Neville called her a useless bitch. He said she was a failure as a wife and a mother and that she couldn’t run a household to save her life. Where had all the servants gone? Why was the house quiet as the grave? Beatrix tried to explain about the ghost, but he was having none of it.
Then my father disappeared to his study and returned brandishing a cricket bat. Red with rage, he promised to teach her a lesson she would never forget. This was the point where I knew I must intervene. No way in hell was I going to allow the bastard to harm my mother.
Running downstairs, I shouted at him to leave her alone. But this only made Neville madder.
“You can keep out of this, you disgusting little freak!” he roared. “This is all because of you. Ever since you came into our lives it’s been one problem after another. Fuck, I didn’t know how good we had it before you came to destroy everything. I wish you had never been born!”
“Please don’t say that,” my mother wailed. “This has nothing to do with Alex. Leave him out of this.”
In a blind fury, my father swung the cricket bat towards her head. In an instant, I was standing between them on the stairs, trying to field the blows he intended to deliver.
“Out of my way!” Neville snarled.
“If you dare touch Mummy, you won’t like what will happen.”
“I can’t believe my ears. Are you trying to threaten me, you little freak?”
Then it happened. Something so miraculous, I still find it hard to believe. An enormous black tentacle tore through the skin of my back and landed my dad a stinging slap across the face, causing him to lose his footing.
With a loud scream, he tumbled down the stairs and broke his neck instantly when his head hit the marble floor. There was an awful cracking sound, followed by a profound silence. A halo of blood rapidly oozed around his twisted and broken body. In amazement, I watched as the tentacle vanished back into thin air.
Breathing heavily, my mother stared at me, slack jawed. She couldn’t believe what she had just witnessed.
Very soon, Hobbs and Mrs Bullivant arrived on the scene to see what all the noise was about. Mrs Bullivant screamed when she saw my father’s dead body and looked up at us from the foot of the stairs.
“Oh my God, what happened?”
For a long moment, Beatrix said nothing, her face white with terror. She couldn’t stop trembling, finding it hard to process the shocking spectacle. I wondered if she was going to hand me over to the wolves. Would my mother betray me even though she knew I had only been trying to defend her?
At last, after a painful interlude, she finally found her voice. “It was an accident,” she said. “Neville was drunk and he lost his footing and fell down the stairs. It was nobody’s fault. It was all just a terrible accident.”
Hobbs and Bullivant exchanged glances. They didn’t seem convinced, but they weren’t about to risk their jobs by challenging her version of events. And of course, there was that small matter of a ghost on the prowl…
