Chez Maximka: The Room in the Attic by Louise Douglas #BlogTour

Wednesday, 13 October 2021

The Room in the Attic by Louise Douglas #BlogTour

Chez Maximka, ghost story set in the asylum

"There it was, in full colour: the same long, forbidding building with the bell tower at its centre that I revisited in my nightmares".

Lewis Tyler is perturbed, and can't sleep. His firm has asked him to go to Dartmoor to look at the old derelict building for the rare redevelopment opportunity. The building is All Hallows, Grade II listed Victorian asylum/boarding school with 50 acres of walled grounds. For the American company which specialises in converting abandoned country piles into luxury living accommodation, the All Hallows it is a prime countryside location and a possible money-spinner, but for Lewis, it's a stuff of nightmares.

He has to revisit his old haunts (literally) and scope the site. "No matter how I tried to put the name All Hallows and all that it represented out of my mind, like shame it clung to me".

All Hallows was built in 1802 as a lunatic asylum, and 150 years later refashioned as a boarding school for boys. When Lewis walks the grounds, the place is falling down inside a thick wall. Its disintegration is clear.

As he walks, memories flash into his mind, and he sees things that are not there, and hears footsteps behind him, a child's laughter. While taking a panoramic video of the building and the grounds outside the church, he notices something odd in the shot - a woman appears in the image, once at a distance, as if standing in the lake, then again, closer, and almost behind him.

Looking up, he sees the woman in a long wet dress, with hair dripping, and her eyes fixed on him. "I knew who she was and why she lingered. It was because of Isak and me, and everything that happened in those last months of 1993 when I was thirteen and Isak was fourteen and we shared the same bedroom at All Hallows. The time that began at the very point when my whole world had fallen apart".

The narrative goes back in time to 1903, when Nurse Emma Everdeen starts to take care of a little girl, rescued from a wrecked lugger containing a comatose woman with the child next to her. They are barely alive. Two survivors are taken to All Hallows, the formidable asylum. For the head of the asylum this is not an altruistic act. "He was a businessman whose priority was money and, having been made aware of the quality of the woman's clothing and jewellery, it was evident that money was connected to these patients".

Emma Everdeen is almost seventy years old, and is the longest-serving nurse at All Hallows. To protect the child from the asylum inmates and help the recovery process in a peaceful location, the unknown child and Emma find themselves in a room in the attic. It is sparsely furnished, with a rocking chair for the old nurse to sleep in. "It was many years since she had had any dealings with children... Having once being a mother herself, Nurse Everdeen had been certain that she would remember how to speak to the child".

While the woman, named Mrs March by the fishermen who found her, remains in coma, Nurse Everdeen tries to establish a relationship with a scared little girl. She offers a knitted rabbit to the child. It belonged to her late son Herbert who died aged 5. This simple gesture brings to the discovery of the girl's name - Harriet. She doesn't seem to know her surname.

Little Harriet reminds Nurse of her own darling Herbert. "Two five-year-olds, fifty years apart, who had no connection with each other save this woman, Emma Everdeen, who had promised to do the best by them".

1993: Lewis Tyler is 13 when his father and stepmother send him to All Hallows boarding school on Dartmoor. His Mum died 18 months earlier in a riding accident. "Losing Mum was like having my anchors cut. I felt as if there was so little of me left that a puff of wind might blow me away".

Lewis is angry and unhappy. And rightly so: his father is indiffirent to his suffering, and quickly re-marries. His step-mother who detests his Goth looks, calls him a delinquent. On her prompts, the father decides to dispatch Lewis to the boarding school which has been "marketed as having no-nonsense, no-frills approach to "character education", i.e. not much better than a prison.

Lewis meets another lost soul in the school. Isak has also lost his mother, and is sent to the school by his obnoxious father. Two motherless boys slowly drift towards each other. While the refurbishment of the dormitories is carried out, the boys are assigned a bedroom at the top floor in the old wing, just under the attic. It feels oppressive and claustrophobic. In the late evening and night there's a creaking, rocking sound from the room above. But the attic is supposed to be uninhabited...

All Hallows is full of memories, cries and whispers from the past. As Lewis and Isak try to find out who Nurse Everdeen was, and what's happened to the little child in her care, it becomes obvious the ghosts are not laid to rest. They want to tell their story.

Will Lewis and Isak be able to discover the fate of the unquiet souls from the asylum? Is there a chance of peace for the All Hallows ghosts?

There are two main storylines running through the book, motherhood (or parenthood) being one of them. There's nurse Everdeen who mourns her precious little Herbert. Lewis's mother who has accepted his individuality and filled her children's lives with love and laughter. The wicked stepmother who does everything in her power to antagonise her husband from his children. Harriet's mother who has cherished her daughter...

The story of the asylum is still relevant today. Though we should have moved from the savage treatments of the patients with mental health problems of the Victorian/Edwardian periods, sadly there are still numerous cases of mis-treatment of people with special needs nowadays. Only a couple of weeks ago there was an article about the abuse of vulnerable people in County Durham. And if you google the topic, this is not a single case. As a mother of a severely autisic son who is not capable of looking after himself, this is my biggest fear, that when I am no longer able to look after him, he might get sent to one of those horrible institutions and be at the mercy of cruel people.

The ghostly apparitions and the supernatural elements could be explained by the trauma of the children who lost their mothers and have been ruthlessly abandoned by their fathers. It's a bit like Life of Pi: did it happen, or has it been imagined by the distressed mind?

The Room in the Attic is a fascinating Gothic tale which ends with a twist that makes it even more satisfying. It is eerie and evocative, and will send shivers down your spine from the very beginninng. It is an absorbing story which kept me flipping the e-pages to the end.

This post is part of the blog tour for The Room in the Attic.

Many thanks to Louise Douglas and Rachel's Random Resources for my e-copy of the book!

Chez Maximka, ghost story set in the boarding school

Praise for Louise Douglas

'A brilliantly written, gripping, clever, compelling story, that I struggled to put down. The vivid descriptions, the evocative plot and the intrigue that Louise created, which had me constantly asking questions, made it a highly enjoyable, absolute treasure of a read.' Kim Nash on The Scarlet Dress

'A tender, heart-breaking, page-turning read' Rachel Hore on The House by the Sea

'The perfect combination of page-turning thriller and deeply emotional family story. Superb.’ Nicola Cornick on The House by the Sea

‘Kept me guessing until the last few pages and the explosive ending took my breath away.' C.L. Taylor, author of The Accident on Your Beautiful Lies

‘Beautifully written, chillingly atmospheric and utterly compelling, The Secret by the Lake is Louise Douglas at her brilliant best’ Tammy Cohen, author of The Broken

‘A master of her craft, Louise Douglas ratchets up the tension in this haunting and exquisitely written tale of buried secrets and past tragedy.’ Amanda Jennings, author of Sworn Secret

‘A clammy, atmospheric and suspenseful novel, it builds in tension all the way through to the startling final pages.’ Sunday Express, S Magazine

Purchase Link - https://amzn.to/3kWii6u

Author Bio –

Louise Douglas is the bestselling and brilliantly reviewed author of 6 novels including The Love of my Life and Missing You – a RNA award winner. The Secrets Between Us was a Richard and Judy Book Club pick. She lives in the West Country. Louise’s first book for Boldwood, The House by the Sea was published in March 2020.