The Stalker
Page 9
We left this morning before we’d had breakfast, and now it’s closer to lunch, but I grab the bacon, sausages and eggs from the fridge and put them down on the side. ‘“Devil”,’ I muse, lifting the cast-iron pan off its hook and setting it down on the hob. ‘It’s such a strange thing to write.’
‘Probably a religious nutjob,’ Liam says. ‘Met a few of those in my time. They’re usually all bark and no bite.’
I often wonder what kinds of cases Liam has to deal with. He never brings his work home with him and barely ever discusses the crimes he’s working on, though I know it’s usually robbery and murder. He says it’s confidential and that he doesn’t want to upset me by giving me any gory details, and to be honest I’m grateful for it; I don’t know how he does what he does and stays so sane.
I turn on the hob and add butter to the pan, but nothing happens; the butter doesn’t melt, and the pan stays cold. I put my hand over the electric plate and discover that it’s still cold. ‘I can’t get the stove to work,’ I say to Liam after a moment spent trying the other rings.
Liam comes over and tries himself, then crosses to the thermostat on the wall and turns it on, but nothing happens with that either. He listens but there’s only a click and no answering spark of the electric boiler turning on. He moves the dial back and forth but still nothing happens. He crosses to the light switch next and tries that. ‘Shit,’ he murmurs under his breath.
We try the light in the hallway and then the one in the living room as well. ‘There’s no electricity,’ he says to me, though I’ve already figured that much out. ‘It’s OK,’ he adds reassuringly, seeing the look of worry that must be stamped on my face. ‘It’s probably a tripped switch or something. Let me go and check.’
He throws on his jacket and steps outside again, braving the rain which is now even heavier, and I stare at the saucepan. If we don’t have electricity everything in the fridge will go bad.
Within a few minutes Liam’s back, his jeans already soaked through. He shuts the door and stands on the mat, dripping rain and shaking his head. ‘It’s not the fuses. I checked them all. It’s the wiring. Someone’s cut through the cables.’
‘What?’ I ask.
Liam repeats himself. ‘Someone – that guy – the person stalking us – has cut through the cables.’
‘Can you fix it?’ I ask.
He shakes his head. ‘No. It would need an electrician.’
‘Is there a generator?’ I ask.
‘The power’s from a wind turbine on the hill. There’s a battery on the side of the house. That’s where he’s cut the cable.’
I realise I’ve sunk down into the closest chair and I’m resting my head in my hands. ‘Why would they do all this?’ I whisper.
Liam shakes his head. Neither of us speaks for a bit. ‘Goddamn it,’ Liam suddenly shouts. ‘This is ridiculous. What the fuck does he want? And what the hell are we going to do without electricity for three more days?’
I don’t reply. Silence fills the cottage, both of us no doubt thinking about why someone would write DEVIL on the window or why they would cut our electricity.
‘That’s it,’ Liam says, zipping his jacket back up. ‘I’m going out there. I’m going to find him. I want to know what this is all about.’
I stare at him aghast. ‘In the rain? Why don’t you wait until it clears?’
‘No,’ Liam says, moving to the door. ‘It’s only some rain. And who knows when it will stop. I can’t bloody believe we thought a honeymoon in Scotland was a good idea.’
‘At least have something to eat before you go,’ I urge, getting up.
Liam ignores me and opens the door. A barrage of rain slams into his face and a blast of cold wind comes with it and he hesitates. After a brief pause, he steps back into the kitchen and shuts the door. ‘Fine,’ he says, grudgingly, sinking into a chair at the table. ‘But as soon as it stops, I’m going to find him.’ He notices the empty pan and the carton of eggs sitting on the side and his shoulders slump even further. ‘What the hell are we going to eat?’
I look about, trying to think of something. We can’t have toast or tea, and raw bacon and eggs isn’t an option. ‘Bread and jam?’ I suggest.
Liam looks put out, but it’s clear there are no other options, so I hurry and place the cut bread on the table along with the butter and jam. He slaps the bread with butter and lashings of jam while I lean against the side and nibble nervously on a dry crust, glancing occasionally toward the window, half expecting to find someone looking in through the crack in the curtain.
‘Jesus Christ, this is not what we signed up for,’ Liam hisses, banging his knife down on the table and making me jump. ‘We can’t stay. We’ve got to find a way off the island.’
‘But how?’ I ask. What are we going to do, I think to myself, swim?
Liam has cracked the curtains open an inch and through the gap we watch the slate sky as we eat. Liam is clearly waiting for the rain to show signs of letting up, but it keeps coming down in torrents. We don’t speak; both of us are too on edge. From his furrowed brow and angry glare, I can tell that Liam’s anger is growing. When he’s finished eating, he drops his dirty plate into the sink with a clatter and walks through into the living room. I follow him as he walks around, checking all the windows are locked tight, as well as the doors. When he’s done, he lights a fire in the wood-burning stove, trying to chase away the chill and the gloom that have descended.
‘We should have enough wood for the rest of the day,’ he tells me, eyeing the pile by the side. He sighs again with annoyance.
I nod, and head into the kitchen, where I wash up, scrubbing the plates to within an inch of their lives. There’s no hot water which makes it difficult. I’m frightened; it feels as if fleas are jumping all over my skin. I keep my eyes trained on the window, half-expecting to see someone watching the house, and because it’s on my mind I’m convinced that I keep seeing things – shapes materialising through the rain, a person silhouetted against the forest – but the mirages vanish as soon as I blink.
I hang up the wet tea towel and tidy up the kitchen, before joining Liam in the front room. He’s poking the fire as if it’s a sleeping bear he’s trying to prod out of hibernation. I check on the bird in its box; it seems to be doing all right, sitting quietly. I’m guessing it’s still in shock, and so I replace the towel and leave it be. I begin pacing to the window and back, too afraid to pull back the curtain and peek out, chewing on the edge of my thumb, wondering what to do next.
I would feel imprisoned, but in a way it’s not too different from my life back home. I’ve been stuck indoors for months there too. I glance at my phone to check the time: it’s almost midday. It feels later though – like it should be evening already – not just because of the dim light but because it feels as if we’ve been awake for hours. We have, I remind myself. We were up at the crack of dawn.
I wish that I could text or call someone, but even if we had reception or a landline, I realise that I don’t have anyone to contact. A wave of sadness washes over me. I’d normally have rung my mum in a situation like this, and failing that, I used to have a couple of friends I could call on if I ever needed a shoulder: Sonia, who was another assistant at the vet’s, and Claire, who I went to primary school with, though she moved to Leeds for university and still lives there, and we haven’t seen each other in ages.
Sonia sent flowers for my mum’s funeral and Claire sent a sweet card and both called a few times in the months after she died, but I never picked up the phone. I didn’t feel able to talk to them. I wonder how I could ever get back in touch now; it feels as if too much time has passed, and they might not understand why I didn’t return their calls. I’m not sure I can explain to them either, not when I can’t fully explain it to myself. It was just too impossible.
I just feel so ashamed of who I’ve become: this shadow of my former self; and I’m also a little embarrassed that I never told them about the wedding. I kept it a secret becau
se I didn’t want people to feel offended that I hadn’t invited them. I’d planned to post something on Facebook after we got back from our Greek honeymoon, but then my mum died, and I didn’t feel like blasting social media with pictures of the wedding. I could barely get out of bed, let alone log onto a computer. But perhaps when I get off this island, I’ll call Claire and Sonia and find a way to get those friendships back on track. Everything that’s happening is making me realise how important it is not to let myself get isolated.
I sit on the sofa and play with my engagement ring, spinning it around and around my finger – it’s a big diamond and the band is loose on me now. I force myself to stop. I need to keep busy and distract myself, otherwise it feels like all we are doing is waiting for the next thing to happen, and I can’t bear the tension of it. I feel like a soldier in a trench, awaiting the dawn whistle.
‘Do you want to play cards?’ I ask Liam, who is standing at the window, peering out through a crack in the curtains; though whether he’s looking at the water, contemplating how far it would be to swim to the mainland, or searching for our stalker, I don’t know. He may even be studying the word DEVIL written on the glass. It’s hard to tell. ‘We may as well distract ourselves,’ I tell him. ‘Otherwise we’ll go mad.’
He pauses then shrugs. ‘I suppose so.’
I saw some cards in the drawer and I go and fetch them. Liam shuffles and deals. We play Whist, a game that my grandad taught me, but I lose every hand to Liam because I’m too preoccupied and I can’t keep the suits straight in my head. Though he wins, he seems almost as preoccupied as I am, a permanent frown creasing his forehead.
After an hour Liam gets up and walks again to the curtain. He pulls it back and scowls at the word DEVIL etched there.
Beyond the word, the sky is a thunderous black and the loch is now the colour of unpolished pewter. Liam shakes his head and drags the curtains back across, concealing the letters carved into the glass. ‘I can’t believe we’re stuck here,’ he spits, ‘completely stranded like this. We should have gone to Greece.’
The Stalker
DEVIL. That was what my mother called me. Her tongue was a lash, and she wielded the word to hurt me. She claimed I was born with the devil inside me and she had to beat him out. She used more than her tongue for that, I’ll tell you.
As a boy I believed my mother was right. I thought there must be something wrong with me; if your own mother won’t love you what other reason could there be? I had evil inside me and that made me unlovable.
I believed I deserved those punishments; the beating and the starving and the name-calling; that I was worthless. But then I grew up. I got bigger. And I saw one day my mother was afraid of me. That changed everything. Something in me switched. I decided to let that devil inside me loose. I thought to myself, Let me show you what the devil is capable of – maybe then you won’t treat me the way you do. Maybe then you’ll learn to show me some respect.
And so it was. The devil took over and my mother quickly learned to hold her tongue. The shoe was on the other foot, and it felt good. Her fear grew, and with it my power. I became a new person.
I learned to wear a good disguise in public of course; many disguises; I learned fast that charm and good looks are all it takes to trick people into believing you are who they want you to be.
No one knew the real me except for my mother, who spent every moment when she wasn’t working praying on her knees for my soul’s salvation.
When I met my wife, I thought she looked like an angel – she was so beautiful and so good – and I wondered if my mother’s prayers had come true. I thought that maybe she’d been sent to save my soul. And for a time when I was with her, everything was peaceful and I began to kid myself that the devil had gone away; that maybe my wife’s love and my mother’s prayers had worked a miracle.
But the devil inside me hadn’t gone away. After a time, he began to stir. Out he would come, like a jack-in-the-box, every time my wife crossed me. I started to wonder if she did it on purpose, like a child wanting to press the button despite knowing exactly what’s going to come leaping out, because she did it so often, despite knowing the consequences.
She stopped respecting me even though she tried to hide it behind a fake smile. She stopped loving me even though she pretended by offering kisses and smiles and lies coated in sugar. She planned to leave me. And it made me angry. My mother’s words rang in my head: you’re not loveable; you’re worthless; you’re a devil; you’re damned.
I’m sure she regrets it. She didn’t want the boy to die. She begged me not to hurt him. But his death was hardly my fault – it was hers. She made me so angry with her betrayal, and he was collateral damage.
I think about them now. I think about them all the time, in fact. I think about how I chased her out of the house. How she was barefoot and how she ran through the snow, glancing over her shoulder, eyes wide with fear, looking exactly as if the devil was chasing her.
Chapter Fifteen
We while away the hours like condemned prisoners awaiting the hour of execution, on edge and barely speaking. I tend to the bird, disheartened to see that it’s weakening. Its heartbeat is rapid and the food and water I gave it remain untouched. If it succumbs to the shock, it won’t last the night. I will it to find some strength and fight.
Liam stokes the fire and when it gets too dark inside the cottage I get out the candles and a torch that I found in a drawer in the kitchen, and we listen to the winds start to howl and the rain firing arrows at the windows.
At five o’clock I start dinner but it takes me a while to figure out what to make because my mind is whirring too much to concentrate on the ingredients and without an oven or a stove top, I’m limited in what I can rustle up. I worry about all the food in the fridge going off but there’s nothing I can do about it, and in the end I pull out the ham and make a salad, doing a calculation in my head as I rinse the lettuce. If we’re here for three more days and we don’t manage to get the electricity working, then we’re going to have to ration what edible food there is. We only have a loaf of bread, some cheese and ham and salad. There’s a jar of pasta sauce and a tin of beans we could eat cold, though I’ll save those until we’re really hungry. There are also some corn flakes. The milk and the butter shouldn’t spoil, given it’s not exactly warm inside the cottage. The kitchen is starting to feel like a refrigerator itself.
In the fruit bowl there’s a handful of apples, some bananas and grapes, and in the cupboard some trail mix and the rest of the shortbread, though Liam’s eaten half already. We could cook the sausages over the fire if push came to shove, I suppose. All in all, though, it isn’t much for two of us for three days given how much Liam eats – but at least I don’t eat a lot, so we should be able to manage.
I make the salad and slice the bread thin, knowing we may need to make it stretch for three more days, then I lay it all out on the table. I decide not to mention the food rationing situation for now because Liam’s already in a bad mood and I don’t want to make things worse. We eat again in silence, the atmosphere in the house almost as bad as the weather outside.
Liam drinks several glasses of red wine, and I watch him warily. Normally he’s quite controlled and only drinks a glass or two at most; it’s another sign that the anxiety is getting to him. He hates not having the upper hand; he’s used to being the shot caller, the one in charge.
I make a ham sandwich and eat it.
‘Your appetite’s coming back,’ Liam comments, swallowing the last of his own sandwich.
I look down at my plate, realising with a start that that’s the first meal in months that I’ve actually eaten all of. I shake my head in surprise. ‘Must be all the adrenaline,’ I say, trying to make a joke of it.
I get up and clear the plates.
‘God, I’d kill for a coffee,’ Liam grumbles. ‘What are we going to do without coffee or tea?’
‘How about we play a board game tonight?’ I ask, to distract him.
I shrug. ‘There’s the Game of Life as well. And draughts.’
‘OK,’ he says, not looking particularly enthusiastic. But what else is there to do but go to bed? I don’t think he’s in the mood for sex, and I’m certainly not, so we’ll only lie there staring at the ceiling if we go upstairs now.
I pull out the Game of Life box, which I haven’t played since I was a kid. I think the aim is to get married, get promotions, have children, buy a mansion and retire early. It takes me a while to read the instructions as my mind is so preoccupied with other things; I can’t stop wondering about the other plans this person has for us and how it all might end. But finally, I lay out the board and hand Liam a plastic car and the dice.
Within a few moves of mostly desultory dice throwing, Liam’s got twins. I glance at him as he picks up a pink peg and a blue peg, and places them in his car with a smile. ‘A boy and a girl,’ he says. He looks up and sees my expression.
‘What?’ he asks.
‘Nothing, just the idea of twins …’
‘You want children, don’t you?’ Liam asks, a note of anxiety creeping into his voice.
‘Yes,’ I say, smiling. ‘Just not yet.’
‘Why not?’ he presses. ‘We’ve talked about this. I thought you wanted children. You said you did.’
‘I do!’ I say. ‘Just not right now. I figure that it’s nice to have time as a couple first before you start a family. Once kids come along your whole life changes. And I’m still young enough. I’m only twenty-nine. There’s time.’
Liam frowns. ‘I just think if we’re going to have more than one, we shouldn’t wait.’
I had no idea that Liam was so keen on having children, or that he wanted to have one right away.
‘How many do you want?’ I ask, hoping he isn’t about to say eight or nine.