That did it. That had me moving. And in my terror, not thinking properly, instead of going back down which would have been the right thing to do, I went up and up, north up the Corkscrew which was not a place to go. Quietly. So quiet at first and slow, slow as I dared, and the door, I thought, is the door still opening? As I slipped on upwards there came an answering thump, an answering clank from below. I prayed it was only my echo, only it seemed to be growing, that echo, it seemed to be stamping out on its own and coming to its own life and to be its own thing entirely. I caught the name in that horrible clamouring and it was, fast and faster, speeding onwards like Grandfather’s engine did through the heaps:

‘Robert Burrington. Robert Burrington! ROBERT BURRINGTON!’

Whoever carried the it that called out ‘Robert Burrington’ was scaling the twisting stairs through the darkness towards me. On I went then, gasping and panting, that deeper heavier clanking beneath me. There was no door now but the one at the top that gave onto the space where the bell of the bell tower once stood, but the bell had been moved down into the house, it was the bell that now summoned us to mealtimes.

At the top was a door into the attics, and it was that door, that terrible out-of-bounds door, which now I and James Henry Hayward and, though fainter, Alice Higgs fled, slipping and sliding on those ancient steps worn by so much foot treading over the centuries, making it dipped and cupped and smoothed out and treacherous at even the slowest pace. On I scrambled, on and up, on and round, to the deafening roar of Robert Burrington, closer and louder, but there was the door at last, arched and ancient, a turn of the screw above me, and on I went, slipping, on hands and knees now, as that Robert and that Burrington bellowed so much, and there was the door, I touched it now, and there, just one turn below, was the bellowing of Robert Burrington, and a heave, and a Robert, and another heave, and a Burrington, and at last the door gave way and I was out of that horrible stone throat and into a different peril.

The Attics of Heap House

The attics of Heap House were never to be visited, for in those rotting chambers lived bats. Tens of thousands of them, they bit at living things with great determination and could cause monstrous infections. There were at least seven cases in my lifetime of an Iremonger succumbing to rabies after bat bites. Unto these regions, with something shrieking Robert Burrington behind me, did I come, in my terror beyond the door of the bell tower ignoring the moulding sign that said TRESPASSERS WILL NOT BE.