The Haunting of Tabitha Grey Read Online Free PDF Page A

want to look at the dining room but something compels me to anyway. In the daylight everything looks normal. Sunlight glints off the silver candlesticks on the table. The
high-backed chairs sit to attention around the long polished table. The room smells of flowers and wax polish and the security guard, Sid, has already been round and thrown open the green shutters
so that light pours into the room from all directions.
    ‘Tabsy, you’re an idiot,’ I say to myself.
    I walk around the room once, just to prove to myself that there’s nothing to be scared of.
    Then I head into the entrance hall.
    Sid is behind the reception desk setting up the computer to connect to the security cameras. There are cameras in every room of the manor, just in case any visitors fancy helping themselves to
the valuables.
    ‘Morning pet!’ he booms at me.
    Dawn looks up. She’s stacking postcards again and tearing tickets off a long roll in preparation for the visitors. Two of them have been allowed in early and are standing chatting by the
fireplace.
    ‘Hiya, Tabitha!’ Dawn says, her dark eyes sparkling. ‘Don’t suppose you want to give me a hand, do you?’
    I smile.
    ‘Maybe later,’ I say. ‘Going to find Dad.’
    ‘He’s upstairs,’ says Dawn. ‘In Lady Eleanor’s bedroom, I think.’
    I thank her and head off towards the staircase, saying ‘good morning’ to the two old lady visitors as I pass the fireplace.
    They both nod at me and return to their conversation.
    They’re dressed in short, smart dark suits and have patent-leather heels and perfectly groomed white hair in buns.
    I smile. They look kind. Then I head up the stairs to find Dad.
    The staircase at Weston Manor is kind of creepy.
    It’s the only time I’ve been up it on my own.
    At the foot of the stairs is an arched glass cupboard built into the wall. It’s full of little porcelain shepherdesses.
    Dad told me that there was a doorway here in the old days and that the cupboard has only been put in quite recently.
    I stand looking in at the little china figures for a moment but then I start to shiver. It’s not the sort of cold feeling I get on a biting winter’s day – the sort that gives
you flushed cheeks and numb fingers. And it’s not the sort of shivering I get just before coming down with flu, when my cheeks burn up red and I can’t stop shaking.
    No – it’s more a sort of bone cold.
    It starts from my feet and moves up my legs and into my chest before causing my face to chill.
    I run my hand along my arm.
    It’s cold and clammy, and the hairs are standing on end.
    I can still hear Dawn talking on the telephone in the entrance hall, even though I can’t see her and it’s kind of comforting, so I tell myself to stop being silly and I move away
from the arch and run upstairs to find Dad.
    He’s in Lady Eleanor’s bedroom, the second room on the right at the top of the stairs. All the bedrooms are on this floor, separated by a small square landing on which a grandfather
clock ticks away the seconds. I poke my head inside the room.
    Dad’s got his tape measure out and is measuring the four-poster bed that sits right in the centre of the room. ‘I don’t think that this is the original bed,’ he says,
more to himself than to me. ‘The Victorians preferred brass beds. Stopped insects eating the wood. I reckon that this one was put in later on.’
    I step into the middle of the room and look around. It’s light and airy, with floral curtains tied back by long red velvet sashes and an oval dressing table with a mirror just underneath
the windows. The bed takes up most of the room. It has a floral bedspread, which matches the curtains, and there’s a long plush sofa along the foot of the bed and a mahogany chest of drawers
near to the door.
    ‘Who’s that?’ I say, peering at a large photograph of a man that perches on the chest. He looks kind of familiar. Dark eyes, moustache, portly stomach bulging out over his