When I climbed away from whispering Ritchie on the ground, the squeaks and groans of the gate were so loud that I was sure I could be heard all the way up the hill and inside the house too. When I got to the top and was getting ready to swing a leg over, Pickering said, ‘Don’t cut your balls off.’ But I couldn’t smile, or even breathe. It was much higher up there than it looked from the ground. My arms and legs started to shake. With one leg over, between the spikes, panic came up my throat. If one hand slipped off the worn metal I imagined my whole weight forcing the spike through my thigh, and how I would hang there, dripping. I looked at the house and I felt that there was a face behind every window, watching me.
Many of the stories about the white place on the hill came into my head at the same time too: how you only see the red eyes of the thing that drains your blood; how it’s kiddie-fiddlers that hide in there and torture captives for days before burying them alive, which is why no one ever finds the missing children; and some say that the thing that makes the crying noise might look like a beautiful lady when you first see it, but soon changes once it’s holding you.
‘Hurry up. It’s easy,’ Pickering said, from way down below.
Ever so slowly, I lifted my second leg over, then lowered myself down the other side. He was right; it wasn’t a hard climb at all; kids could do it.
I stood in hot sunshine on the other side of the gate, smiling. The light was brighter over there; glinting off all the white stone and glass on the hill. And the air seemed weird, real thick and warm. When I looked back through the gate, the world around Ritchie seemed grey and dull like it was November or something. He stood on his own, biting his bottom lip. Around us, the overgrown grass was so glossy it hurt my eyes to look at it. Reds, yellows, purples, oranges and lemons of the flowers flowed inside my head and I could taste hot summer inside my mouth. Around the trees, the statues and the flagstone path, the air was wavy and my skin felt so warm that I shivered. Closing my eyes, I said, ‘Beautiful.’ A word that I wouldn’t usually use around Pickering.
‘This is where I want to live,’ he said, his eyes and face one big smile.
We both started to laugh and hugged each other, which we’d never done before. Anything I ever worried about seemed silly now. I felt taller, and could go anywhere, and do anything that I liked. I know Pickering felt the same. Anything Ritchie said sounded stupid to us, and I don’t even remember it now.
Protected by the overhanging tree branches and long grasses, we kept to the side of the path and began walking up the hill. But after a while, I started to feel a bit nervous. The house looked even bigger than I’d thought it was, down by the gate. Even though we could see no one and hear nothing, I felt like we’d walked into a crowded but silent place where lots of eyes were watching us. Following us.
We stopped walking by the first statue that wasn’t totally covered in green moss and dead leaves. Through the low branches of a tree, we could still see the two stone children, naked and standing together on the marble block. One boy and one girl. They were both smiling, but not in a nice way, because we could see too much of their teeth.
‘They’s all open on the chest,’ Pickering said. And he was right. Their stone skin was peeled back on the breastbone, and cupped in their outstretched hands were small lumps with veins carved into the marble – their own little hearts. The good feeling I had down by the gate went.
Sunlight shone through the trees and striped us with shadows and bright slashes. Eyes big and mouths dry, we walked on and checked some of the other statues that we passed. We couldn’t stop ourselves; it was like the sculptures made you stare at them so that you could work out what was sticking through the leaves, branches and ivy. There was one horrible cloth-thing that seemed too real to be made from stone. Its face was so nasty that I couldn’t look at it for long. Standing under that thing gave me the queer feeling that it was swaying from side to side, and ready to jump off the block and come at us.
Pickering was walking ahead of me, but he stopped to look at another statue. I remember he seemed to shrink into the shadow that the figure made on the ground, and he peered at his shoes like he didn’t want to see the statue. I caught up with him, but didn’t look too long either. Beside the statue of the ugly man in a cloak and big hat was a smaller shape covered in a robe and hood with something coming out of a sleeve that reminded me of snakes.
I didn’t want to go any further and knew that I’d be seeing these statues in my sleep for a long time. Looking down the hill at the gate, I was surprised to see how far away it was now. ‘Think I’m going back,’ I said to Pickering.
Pickering never called me a chicken. He didn’t want to start a fight and be on his own. ‘Let’s just go into the house quick,’ he said. ‘And get something. Otherwise no one will believe us.’
The thought of getting any closer to the white house, and the staring windows, made me feel sick with nerves. It was four storeys high and must have had hundreds of rooms. All the windows upstairs were dark, so we couldn’t see beyond the glass. Downstairs, they were all boarded up against trespassers.
‘It’s empty, I bet,’ Pickering said, to try and make us feel better. But it didn’t do much for me. He didn’t seem so smart or hard any more. He was just a stupid kid who hadn’t got a clue.