The Demons of Cambian Street

The soft aroma of Badedas bath oil pervaded the air and relaxed her senses as Stella Irwin lay back in the fragrant bubbles. Then she was drifting, the warm water bathing and soothing her, dissolving her fears. She could almost believe there was nothing wrong. That she had imagined it all.


Then, without warning, came a thunderous crash.


Her eyes snapped open. She jerked upright, splashing water onto the floor.


“What the hell was that?” She scrambled to her feet. She was out of the bath and wrapped in her toweling robe in less than a minute.


Panting, she opened the bathroom door a crack. Outside, the hall light was still on, just as she had left it, reflecting off the walls, freshly painted in a creamy off-white. Her gaze took in the empty landing before settling on the old wooden door to her right. Staring at it, her heart beat faster and a corkscrew of panic twisted in her gut.


The bolt was drawn back. Again.


She wasn’t imagining it. She’d prayed she was wrong.


She sought the only possible explanation, calling her husband’s name. “Paul, is that you?”


She listened but heard nothing.


Summoning all the courage she could find, she crept into the hall, lifted the ancient latch, and cracked the closet door open to peek into the darkness. It creaked. She slammed the door shut, bolting it tightly, as she’d done twice before.


Sprinting across the landing, she called again, “Paul? Are you down there?” Silence. Clutching the banister, she made her way down carpeted stairs into the kitchen. She flicked the switch. The fluorescent light shuddered into life, illuminating the newly fitted pine units and gleaming stove. The aroma of boeuf bourguignon emanated from the oven. But Paul wasn’t there or in the living room.


Her hands shaking, Stella picked up the phone and pressed number one on the speed dial to reach the main bar of the social club downstairs.


Paul answered on the third ring. “Hi.”


“Did you just come up here?” she asked, her voice trembling.


“No, why?”


“I was in the bath and heard a loud crash and the bolt on the closet door on the landing was drawn back even though I knew I had locked it—”


“Stella, you’re gabbling. What’s happened? Are you OK?”


“Yes. No. Oh, I don’t know.” She ran her free hand through her still dripping hair.


“Look, Suzannah’s here and we’re not that busy. She can look after both bars. I’ll pop up for a few minutes and investigate that damn cupboard for you once and for all.”


Stella replaced the receiver and tried to calm herself. Ever since they had arrived in Priory Saint Michael a couple of months before, their dreams of settling in a peaceful country retreat had started to go awry. Her bout with cancer the previous year had led them to leave Leeds and their hectic city life behind them, and now they lived above the small town’s social club where Paul had gotten a job as the steward.


But on their first day, Pattie Davies, one of the members, had warned them about the apartment which had lain uninhabited for thirty years. And now Stella wished she'd listened more closely.


Paul’s key scraped in the door’s lock, and then he bounded up the stairs. “Good grief, Stella, you’re as white as your robe. Come on, let’s get you upstairs. You need to lie down.”


“I need to get dressed.”


“All in good time. Come on.”


Still trembling, she followed him upstairs and sat on the bed, her mind racing. What could have caused that crash today—not the first by any means—and, perhaps more disturbingly, how was the bolt being pushed back?


She shoved damp, blond hair out of her eyes and found clothes. Across the landing, she could hear Paul opening the closet door. Then she heard him pushing things around. A few minutes later, dressed in jeans and sweatshirt, she joined him.


Thankfully, Paul had brought a flashlight up from the club. It made a big difference, illuminating dark corners of the unlit walk-in closet. She hadn’t been able to see clearly before. Now she scrutinized the cluttered mess of discarded junk: broken bar stools, boxes of old Christmas decorations, and who knew what? Paul had already stacked some boxes on top of each other, clearing a path through to the back and to the left. Only the right side, through another doorway, remained untouched, and that seemed to be filled with an enormous artificial Christmas tree. It was too dark to see beyond it. Too dark to see how far back it went. She shivered. The inky blackness unnerved her, though she tried to tell herself that was her imagination.


Paul was too busy shifting boxes to notice her reaction. He wiped dusty hands on his jeans. “A lot of stuff has been knocked over here, and on these bare boards any of these boxes could have made a loud crash.” He flashed the torch to the right. “That was certainly a big tree,” he said. “I’ll get a couple of the guys to come and help shift it one of these days, along with this other rubbish. My guess is that the vibration from the heavy traffic outside was responsible. After all, we’re on the corner of Cambian Street and the High Street, so it’s a double whammy. It probably caused something to shake itself loose from wherever it was stacked. Maybe one extra-heavy lorry did the rest. It could quite easily happen, the way they thunder up and down that hill. This whole building shakes sometimes.”


“I know. I’ve felt it.” Though calmer, she was still averse to stepping into the cupboard and joining him. It would be like entering another, much older, world. She felt safer with her feet on the newly carpeted landing. Before they had moved in, the whole apartment had been renovated, decorated and modernized, and was now light, bright, comfortable, and clean, even if it did have a little too much beige and cream for her taste. But the building dated from the 1760s and had gone through a number of incarnations. Now only this large closet, tucked under the eaves, bore witness to its past. Its sloping roof, coupled with Paul’s six foot height, meant he had to stoop uncomfortably low as he moved around.


Although she’d stopped quivering, Stella still couldn’t shake off her unease. His explanation for the crashes she had heard since they had moved in made perfect sense, but…


“How did that bolt move? I know I locked it. Just like I did yesterday. And both times it managed to slide across apparently all by itself.”


Paul shook his head. “You’re right. I can’t explain that. But I can get us a new bolt, and I’ll do that tomorrow. The little hardware shop across the road will have some.” He shifted a broken bar stool out of the way.


Something metallic tinkled. “What’s this?” Paul bent to retrieve a silver chain from which hung a circular pendant. “What do you make of that?” He handed it to Stella.


The silver pendant was a mass of interwoven bands. “It looks Celtic to me,” she said. “Like a collection of knots, sort of woven together. It’s very pretty. I bet someone really missed that when they lost it.”


“Wonder how it got up here?”


“No idea. But if you take it down to the club, someone might recognize it. Maybe it belonged to a relative. It’s quite distinctive.”


“Maybe it belonged to that Sarah Asher they were talking about. The steward’s wife who went mad.”


“Possibly.” Stella looked at her watch. “You’d better get back down there or they’ll think you’ve taken the rest of the day off. I’m going to peel some potatoes.”


“Sure you’re OK now?”


“Yes, I’m fine. I feel better now I’ve seen this place in the light—well, most of it anyway. It’s not so spooky when the corners are lit up.” She sounded more confident than she felt, but she didn’t want to worry Paul. He had worried enough about her over these past long months.


“Once we get the new bolt on and it stays put, you won’t have any nasty shocks.”


“True.”


Stella backed away to let Paul out. He switched off the flashlight before shutting and bolting the door.