Midnight Is a Lonely Place

by Barbara Erskine

  ‘How strange.’ Kate’s eyes were fixed on Alison’s face. To her, Roger had come across as a man with poetry in his soul. And he was a man who still, in extremis, cried out the name of Christ even though it meant nothing to him.

  ‘Do you pray?’ Diana sat down on the edge of the bed and laid a gentle hand on her daughter’s forehead. It was very cold.

  ‘Not very often. But it was me who taught Paddy the words to say. Outside in the dark it seemed the right thing to do. He thought Marcus would understand the Latin.’

  ‘And did he?’ The note of irony Diana was aiming at somehow failed to materialise; the question came out straight.

  ‘I don’t know. But the words made me feel better. A shield. A talisman against evil.’

  ‘He’s got us trapped here, hasn’t he.’ Diana looked at her suddenly and for a moment she could no longer hide her panic. ‘Every one of the cars is damaged; the phone won’t work; no one knows what’s happened. Bill and Cissy tried to help us and look what happened to them.’ A tear slid down her face. ‘And Allie. What’s happened to Allie?’

  Kate knelt beside her and took her hand. ‘I think we should take Allie downstairs. I think we should all stay together.’

  ‘She’s right.’ Greg’s voice from the landing made them both jump. He hobbled in and stood looking down at his sister. ‘I’ll ask Joe to come and carry her down then I think you should make a huge cauldron of soup for us all.’ He was looking at his mother. He glanced at Kate who was still kneeling on the floor. ‘Everything will seem a bit less fraught in the morning, then we can send for reinforcements.’

  Kate gave him a watery smile. ‘You make it sound easy.’ The flickering candlelight, made her face look ethereal. She had, he noticed not for the first time, a frail, pre-Raphaelite beauty, emphasised by her disordered, tangled hair and helped, he supposed wryly, by the submissive posture, on her knees at his feet.

  ‘It will be easy. Everything is always better in daylight.’

  ‘Don’t tempt providence!’ As if realising that her position put her at a disadvantage, she scrambled to her feet. Standing, she was as tall as he. ‘Greg.’ She put her hand on his arm, her voice barely a whisper. ‘Look, by the window. On the floor.’

  He raised an eyebrow, then picking up the candle, he limped across and surveyed the carpet.

  ‘Sand. It could have come from Allie’s shoes.’

  ‘But it didn’t. I was up here earlier and it wasn’t here.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘I just am.’ She shrugged. ‘I notice things like that. After the cottage.’

  ‘What are you saying?’ Diana turned to look at the carpet.

  ‘She’s saying that some sand has blown in the window and that it would be better if we all went downstairs and sat round the fire,’ Greg said firmly.

  ‘Don’t patronise me!’ Diana snapped. She stood up. ‘What does the sand mean?’ She looked at Kate.

  ‘All right, I’ll tell you,’ Greg said slowly. ‘It means that I don’t think we are dealing with a human killer. I don’t think there is anyone out there in the woods or on the beach. I think our enemy is a man who has been dead for nearly two thousand years; a man who is very, very angry because we have disturbed a grave in the sand. And I think we are all in terrible danger.’

  LVI

  ‘I must have been mad to come, quite mad!’

  Anne Kennedy walked along the line of small cars, the keys in her hand as she peered through the driving snow to try and find the vehicle she had been allocated. In her other hand were the handles of a large canvas holdall, a road map bought from the car hire desk in the airport terminal, the strap of her shoulder bag, and there were three books balanced in the crook of her elbow.

  It had not been snowing in Edinburgh. This was ridiculous. Sisterly love had overstepped the bounds. There it was. Number 87. A small, neat, bright red Ford Fiesta. With relief she slotted the key into the lock and pulled the door open. The car smelled of plastic and air freshener. It was blessedly spotless. Tossing her bag and her books onto the back seat she climbed in and closed the door then she fumbled for the light switch. She had to find out how to get from Stansted out to the east coast before the snow piled too thick in the country lanes.

  Her last conversation with Kate had worried her a great deal, as had the fact that Kate’s phone was still out of order. It had been with enormous relief that she had found two visiting lecturers to look after her flat and wait upon C.J’s every whim, so that she could head south for a three-day break to reassure herself that all was well. Now she was not so sure that she had done the sensible thing. England, with its usual paranoia about any weather pattern one or two points either side of the norm showed every sign of closing down completely. The forecast was becoming increasingly hysterical and to make matters worse, Kate was not even expecting her, thanks to the incompetence of the telephone engineers who swore each time she rang them that the line had been checked and was working perfectly.

  She took one last look at the road map, memorised the formula – A120 east towards Colchester, A12 north towards Ipswich and then A120 again – switched on the engine and turned out the light. It would take, she reckoned, about an hour, perhaps an hour and a half at most. She glanced down at the dashboard clock. It was nearly nine already. The roads were unpleasant but by no means impassable as she drove east, the windscreen wipers carving arcs in sleet which turned white and sparkling in the reflected headlights of oncoming cars. The road was more or less straight and she made far better time than she expected, bypassing Dunmow and Braintree and turning north at last on the main dual carriageway which cut through the flatlands of East Anglia towards Suffolk. The radio played quietly in the background with once a break for the weather forecast – dire: overnight snow would thicken with easterly gales tomorrow causing drifting, and piling high tides onto the beach with the full moon – and a news update, then it lapsed once more into Brahms and Schumann.

  It was ten past ten when she pulled into a layby in front of a multi-armed signpost and, flicking on the light, consulted her road map again. It showed Redall as a small dot on the shore. Leading to it was a broken line which denoted a track of some sort. To reach the track she had to negotiate about four miles of intricate lanes. She scowled. The snow was harder now and though the little car had bowled gamely through the worst it could throw at her so far, there were signs of it drifting now she was on a deserted road. There were no car tracks visible; and at the foot of hedges a deceptively soft bank was building up on both sides of the road.

  ‘Oh, well, plough on.’ She muttered to herself. She had already pinpointed a pub on the mainish road which looked as though it was only half a mile or so from Redall. Perhaps she should make for that first.

  The tyres slithered uncomfortably as she engaged first gear and pulled out into the middle of the carriageway, but once she got going the car held the road. Left. Left. Right. She repeated the turnings to herself out loud as she negotiated each increasingly narrow lane with more and more care. She should be nearly there now. There should be a pub on the next bend.

  There wasn’t. She drove on. The turning she knew should appear within a couple of hundred yards did not materialise. The lane turned inland again and wound infuriatingly back on its tracks, climbing up and down steep hills which had no right to be there at all. She must have missed a turning somewhere. ‘Damnation!’ She pulled up and consulted the map again. It looked so straightforward on paper. Left, left, right. A straight bit, a bend, the pub and then a few more bends until the top of the track. She wound down the window and stared out. The wind was ice cold, clean, cutting. Ice crystals seared her skin. All she could hear was silence and then, almost subliminally, in her bones, the distant moan of the wind. Hastily she wound her window up again. She preferred the steamy, incestuous fug of the little car with its canned music – Schumann had now given way to a Beethoven Sonata.

  She had begun to ponder the possibility of having to spend the n
ight in the car – not a pleasant prospect without rugs or thermos – when she saw the lights of a house loom out of the snow ahead. It was no pub, but at least the occupants might be presumed to know where they were.

  They did, and it was a good five miles from Redall. ‘You turned the wrong way back there, my dear.’ The elderly man who opened the door in his dressing gown had invited her into his hallway to consult her map with her. ‘What you had better do is go on down here,’ he stabbed at it with a nicotine-stained finger, ‘and then turn back along the estuary road.’

  ‘Are you on your own?’ A pale wispy woman in a worn eau-de- Nil bathrobe, her straggly hair in rollers, appeared at the top of the stairs. ‘You shouldn’t drive around on your own on a night like this.’

  ‘I know.’ Anne managed a bright smile. ‘I didn’t realise the weather was going to be so bad.’

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea before you go on?’ The woman was descending the stairs now, one step at a time, painfully.

  Anne was sorely tempted but she shook her head. ‘It’s kind of you, but I think I had better go on. It’s settling quite deep and I don’t want to get stuck.’

  ‘Well, you go carefully,’ the old lady nodded. ‘And you watch out for the Black Dog on the marsh.’ She chuckled as she watched Anne pull up her collar and run out to the car.

  ‘Black Dog!’ Anne muttered to herself as she restarted the engine. She had heard of the phantom Black Dog of East Anglia; she gave a wry grin. She had not expected to run into the supernatural quite so soon.

  As the car slithered down the lane and turned at last onto a slightly broader road which showed signs of having been recently sanded, the snow lessened and a patch of clear sky revealed a high, cold moon, only a fraction off the full, sailing amongst a trail of huge, bulbous clouds. Cautiously Anne accelerated a little, following the winding road with care. The woman had described this as the estuary road, and suddenly Anne saw why. A steep incline, where the car tyres spun wildly for a moment gave way to a flat straight stretch and she found she was looking down on a broad river estuary, glinting like silver in the moonlight. She brought the car to a standstill and stared. It was breathtaking. A landscape of white and silver and polished steel. And completely deserted. She had not, she realised, seen another car for over half an hour now. Turning her back with regret on the view, she set off again, more slowly this time, determined not to miss the turnings which would take her across the arm of land which led behind Redall Bay.

  The track was in the right place. There was no doubt she had reached it at last, but it was obvious that that was as far as the little car was going. The wind had piled the snow across the turning in heaps four feet deep. She climbed out and looked round in despair. The moonlight was so bright now that the road was clearly visible in both directions for several hundred yards. She had passed a farmhouse some half a mile back. Perhaps she should drive back there and ask their advice? She glanced at her watch. It was after eleven. Not too late, surely, to knock on the door.

  But the farmhouse, when she reached it, was in darkness and her repeated knocking brought no answer.

  She shivered. The moon was half veiled now and the clouds were building once more. In another few minutes it would have gone. Climbing back into the car, glad of its lingering warmth, she sat back for a moment and thought. There were only two alternatives. Either she could drive on to the next village and beg a room at the pub or she could leave the car on the road and walk down the track to Redall.

  Pulling back onto the road she drove slowly back to the top of the track and stopped. It was clearly visible, in spite of the snowdrifts, winding into the trees. She put on the light again and stared down at her map. The track could not be more than half a mile long, less probably. She measured it with her thumbnail. It was crazy to go away now she had got here. She glanced up at the sky again, peering through the windscreen. The moon was clearly visible now, lighting the whole place like day. The banks of snow cloud she had seen over the estuary did not seem to have advanced at all. It would be easy to see her way down the track.

  She made up her mind. Climbing out of the car she pulled her bag out with her. There was a bottle of Laphroaig in there, produce of Scotland. She had not forgotten her sister’s fondness for malt whisky and if she fell in a snowdrift, to hell with all the received wisdom about cold and alcohol, she would drink it herself. Turning off the lights she locked the car and, shouldering the bag, with a rueful glance down at her far-from-waterproof Princes Street boots, she turned towards the trees.

  For the first twenty-five yards the moonlight lit the path with brilliant clarity and it was easy to put the thought of Kate’s poltergeist out of her mind. The snow was soft but not very thick and she found the going easy, though it was strange how quickly her bag grew heavy. Then abruptly the track turned at right angles into a densely growing copse and the moonlight, deflected by the trees, shone elsewhere. The path at her feet was black. In spite of herself she glanced over her shoulder into the deeper shadows. It was very quiet. The wind had died and she could hear nothing but the steady crunch of the snow beneath her boots.

  She stopped to swing her holdall onto the opposite shoulder. Without the steady sound of her own footsteps the night was eerily quiet. No wind; no patter of leaves; then, in the distance she heard the manic tu-wit, tu-wit of an owl, followed by a long wavering hoot. It was a primitive sound which brought a shiver to the back of her neck. She walked on, unaware how tightly her knuckles were knotted into the straps of the bag on her shoulder.

  Her eyes were used to the darkness now and she could make out more detail. The gnarled oaks, their solid profiles clearly recognisable, the tangled mass of less easily identifiable copse which crowded to the edge of the track, the dense curtain of some creeper or other – traveller’s joy, perhaps – which hung in clusters over the path. The track turned again and she found the snow at her feet bathed in moonlight once more. With a sigh of relief she quickened her pace, slithering out of control as the track steepened, staggering to keep her feet.

  It was then she saw the upturned car. Cautiously she approached it, her heart thumping uneasily, pushing her way through the broken branches. The skid marks were still visible beneath the snow, and the dark stains which in daylight would probably be blood. Her mouth had gone dry as she peered round the upturned bonnet. There was no one there. Relieved, she touched the cold metal and saw the drift of snow which had settled on the inside console. The crash must have happened a while ago and whoever had been in the car had gone.

  The loud crack of a breaking twig stopped her in her tracks. She looked round. She could hear her heart thundering in her ears. She glanced up at the sky. The moon was almost gone. In another few seconds it would be swallowed by the thick, snow-heavy band of cloud which was drifting steadily in from the sea. It was nearly midnight and she had never felt so lonely in her life.

  The skin on the nape of her neck began to prickle as she walked on. She tried to view the feeling objectively. It was a primitive reaction to fear of the unseen; or was she sensing something out there in the dark? Something watching her. Swallowing hard, she made herself go on. Surely it could not be far now to the farmhouse? A flicker in the strength of the moonlight made her glance up again. Only a few seconds more and the moon would be gone. She held on to her bag more tightly, refusing to quicken her pace. A fear of the dark was an irrational primitive throwback; this was the twentieth century. There were no wild beasts out there, queuing up to eat her, no enemy tribes, no evil spirits, no ghosts. She was a rational, liberated modern woman; a scientist.

  But in at least one of the books in her bag there was a very convincing argument that ghosts and spirits were real entities.

  The darkness when it came was total. Her step faltered – a logical reaction to sudden blindness which would pass as soon as her night sight came back. She knew the path was clear; she had been able to see twenty feet in front of her a moment before, so why had she stopped? Why was she convinced tha
t there was someone standing there on the path immediately in front of her? Why did she have this terrible urge to turn and run back the way she had come?

  ‘Come on, Anne!’ Like her sister she was prone to addressing herself out loud. ‘Get a move on. Your feet are getting cold!’ The sound of her voice seemed shocking in the silence; an intrusion. ‘You’ll be singing Onward Christian Soldiers in a minute,’ she went on conversationally. ‘Go on, you bastard.’ She was no longer addressing herself. ‘If you’re out there, show yourself, whoever you are.’

  This was ludicrous. There was no one there. No one at all. She gritted her teeth and walked on, concentrating grimly on the wild beauty of the night. She could understand Kate’s enchantment with this place. The silence, the clean pure air which came, she supposed, straight from the arctic ice, the occasional glimpses before the moon had gone, of glittering, still water through the trees. She pictured the cottage where Kate was by now probably tucked up cosily in bed. A warm stove, oak beams, pretty, chintzy curtains, an old bed with a soft feather mattress and an old- fashioned patchwork quilt. When she arrived there would be coffee and food and whisky of course, and a long night of gossip with their toes tucked up near the fire –

  She snapped suddenly out of her reverie. In the distance she could hear the sound of galloping hooves. It was coming closer. The creak of leather, the hiss of breath through a horse’s nostrils. She flung herself back off the path, feeling the ground shake beneath the rider as he hurtled up the track and then he was gone. Shocked, she stared back the way she had come. She had seen nothing. How could anyone ride at that speed in the dark? And why? What was so important?

  With a heavy sense of foreboding she slithered back onto the track, renewing her grip on her bag, aware suddenly of a new smell in the fresh coldness of the air. A foul, acrid smell. The smell of burning.

  She stood for a moment looking at the still smouldering barn, feeling the heat striking out from the black stinking ashes, then she walked slowly towards the farmhouse and banged on the door.