by Simon Clark
‘Don’t worry,’ Fabian told her. ‘We’ll keep looking.’
‘OK, I’m ready.’
Fisher glanced at her. Anxiety made her smile appear forced.
Fabian picked up on the emotional tension, too. ‘I’ll walk you to the car. And be sure to keep your doors locked when you’re out on the road.’
‘I will.’ She kissed him.
‘Are you set, Fisher?’ Fabian paused by the door. ‘The others have already gone out to search the grounds. We can go through the house again.’
‘Sure. I’ll just leave this running.’ Fisher thumbed the button on the compact video camera then placed it on the table with the lens pointing in the direction of their instruments.
Fabian nodded at the bass guitar on its stand. ‘You’re not going to lock the Rickenbacker in your room?’
Fisher shook his head, ‘Bait,’ he told him, then followed the pair out of the ballroom.
Josanne switched on the car’s headlights as she accelerated along the driveway to the road. Even though it wasn’t yet five in the afternoon low cloud and mist collaborated on drawing the dusk down early to engulf the countryside in gloom. She glanced back through the rear-view mirror. Fabian stood in front of The Tower. The massive building of black stone dwarfed him. The tower that gave the old mansion its name reared above her boyfriend. For a second the tower held her attention. A tombstone-shaped monstrosity looming against a dull grey sky.
The hiss of tyres running off the asphalt into soft mud snatched her attention back to the driveway in front. Dear God, the last thing I need now is to crash the car. Stay focused. Kym needs you. Josanne shivered. A weight had settled on her shoulders in the last few hours. She worried about what had happened to Kym. The drowning nightmare preyed on her mind. Sure, just a wacky nightmare. That’s all. But it had been brutally vivid. When she’d woken in her room she found herself lying face down on the floor. Weird choking sounds were coming from her throat. Her ribs ached, she’d breathed so deeply. I want out of that house, she told herself. I want to get away. Never go back. The place made her skin crawl.
At the gateway, Josanne realized she’d made a right turn instead of a left. A left would have taken her to the houses near the ferry terminus. She knew there she’d find a telephone, only … only … I want to see bright lights, she told herself. Back that way is a country road that leads to middle-of-nowhere houses. York lies in this direction. Even if I don’t make it to the city I’ll probably reach a small town in twenty minutes.
Just a couple of days in The Tower had begun to seem like weeks of internment. Even a rural town would be a bustling metropolis in comparison. She could find a petrol station, make that all important telephone call. Then maybe take the others back some fresh-baked pizza. After hunting through fog-bound grounds they’d welcome some hot food. It shouldn’t take the police long to reach The Tower either. With those thoughts Josanne began to relax a little. If anything it was good to be away from the brooding presence of the house. Those long bleak corridors were so damn depressing. Even driving along this deserted road was vastly more pleasing than that grim pile of rock back there. Josanne loved the car like it was home anyway. Sometimes she wondered if she was afflicted by a perverse sense of pleasure, but often she’d drive for miles for the sake of it. Its seats were more comfortable than an armchair. Inside it she felt as snug as a kitten curled up in front of a log fire. As miles of countryside slid by she gave a sigh as she sank deeper into the driver’s seat. Tension left her muscles. Her body softened as her spine relaxed into the shape of the cushioned backrest. Don’t go back, Josanne. Just keep driving. Leave Fabian and the rest at the house. They’d welcome the lack of distractions anyway. The thought took her by surprise. Hell, the notion of never going back to the sullen building was tempting. Just telephone the police, tell them about Kym, then hit the road to York.
Yeah, now that was an alluring proposition. She glanced at the clock on the dash. She’d been driving thirty minutes. In all that time there’d been no sign of human habitation. No houses. No garages. No welcoming wayside tavern. In the misty dusk all she’d seen were dark sentinels of trees lining a deserted road. No cars either. Not one passed her by.
Josanne murmured, ‘This road does go somewhere, doesn’t it?’ When she reached a crossroads she paused for a moment, the engine idling. ‘So which way now?’ She leaned forward with her chin touching the steering wheel so she could look left then right. Nothing but wet roads vanishing into the mist. ‘Great. Just great. No road signs either.’ Josanne frowned. ‘OK. Left? Right? Straight on?’
A sharp rap sounded on the car body. She lurched in the seat. ‘Who’s there!’
The doors … I did lock them, didn’t I? The rap sounded again over the purr of the motor. Her heart hammered against her chest as she jabbed her fingers at the central locking control. When the click of door locks sounded all around her she sighed with relief. At the same moment an object struck the car. Again the loud tap.
‘Idiot. It’s only drops of water falling off a tree.’
Even though she’d identified the source of the phantom rapping she didn’t hang around. Without thinking about it further she chose left at random then accelerated away. Damn tree, dripping water like that onto the car. In her head the water drops striking the bonnet had begun to adopt the resonance of clock chimes.
Fisher found himself in the centre of the manor house, back in The Promenade. On the musty air rode the faint scent of sandalwood. There was something faded about the smell. As if whatever exuded it had been walled up centuries ago. He swept the light across the high walls that formed a kind of interior chasm that must be twenty feet wide by thirty feet deep. To one side there was nothing but featureless whitewashed stone that extended up to a walkway. Only yesterday he, Marko and Kym had stood gazing in astonishment at what lay opposite them. Now he turned the flashlight onto the façade of the ancient house within a house. Why someone chose to name that mutant slab of a building The Good Heart heaven alone knew.
‘Hell,’ he murmured at the structure. ‘You’ve not grown any prettier since I saw you last.’
Fisher had searched the ground floor. Fabian had elected to check upstairs. Although by now the chance of finding Kym had become remote. Fisher’s search had brought him to The Good Heart. The place had all the allure of a funeral home. Once more his eyes took in the grey stone. The colour of bleached bones, they were uneven blocks of all different sizes, ranging from rounded lumps the size of a bunched fist to craggy boulders. Directly in front of him lay the doorway. Like the tiny windows, it was framed with slabs of smooth, black stone. Eight hundred years ago men and women first used that dwarfish doorway to enter the house. Maybe then it was a home of astonishing modernity. After all it boasted glazed windows. In an attempt to make it classier they’d set the carving of the animal above the front door. From its tapering tail he figured it must be a dragon. Although the carved stone had weathered for centuries, before being enveloped by the structure of the later mansion, he could make out veined membranous wings. From its shoulders extended a neck that resembled the body of a serpent. The neck terminated in a reptilian head with a set of jaws that stretched wide open as if about to chew a lump from its prey. He could imagine naughty children being brought to see the carved monster while a parent wagged a finger and said, ‘If you don’t behave yourself, that there beastie will find you and eat you up.’ Sweet dreams, children. Flippant thoughts stole into Fisher’s mind again. They always did: a safeguard against troubling ideas. God damn it, he’d even compared this artifact … this preserved façade of an ancient farmhouse to a funeral home. He’d done that because there wasn’t a day went by that he didn’t recall walking up to the funeral home with its black door and black-painted window frames; the funeral home where his father lay in his coffin. That memory slithered like a viper from under a log to strike at him every time he let his guard down.
‘Come on,’ he told himself. ‘Let’s see what you’re hiding in
there.’
He stooped so he could pass under the doorway into the weird house within a house. Immediately, he had the sensation of entering an alien dwelling. The ceiling had long ago been removed to afford views of a hollow section of the tower above him. A lofty void, of somehow troubling spaces. An irrational impression perhaps, but there you go. Thick walls had been covered down the centuries with so many coats of whitewash there were no corners as such, only softly curving transitions from one vertical plane to another. The stone floors had been polished by generations of feet. There was something slick about them. As if they’d been brushed with oil. Damn it, it was cooler in here, too. Scratch cool. Cold. He exhaled to prove the point. White vapour billowed from his mouth. A sweep with the flashlight revealed only a table remained to furnish the room, while a fireplace had more in keeping with the entrance to a tomb than home to a welcoming fire. The cave-like opening oozed shadow. Again, an irrational impression, but this wasn’t a place where rational ideas would find comfort. A shiver plucked his skin into goose bumps. The Good Heart? It has a smugness about it, he thought. It excretes smug waves like a man sweats salt water from his skin. It’s smug about its longevity. It watches young people move around inside of it. Its stones enjoy the spectacle of its occupants ageing. Time is its weapon; hours its bullets; years its bombs. Time remorselessly bombards those young bodies.
Unchanging, immobile, coldly detached – the house watches as silver begins to salt dark hair; wrinkles form around eyes. Immune to the corrosive power of age the house sees its occupants change and decay. In seemingly no time at all young lovers with flashing smiles and sparkling eyes become shuffling hunched things – little more than shells that only vaguely resemble their younger selves. Then one day it’s over. The funeral cortège pulls away from that front door. Soon another young family enters with a spring in their step. And don’t you just know it? The short-lived dance begins all over again. Smug house. Smug bastard house.
No doors led off from this room in the so-called Good Heart. So to dispel the morbid drag of thoughts he turned to walk briskly through the stunted doorway and out into The Promenade with its stale odour of sandalwood. At that moment the blind clock began to chime.
‘Stupid clock,’ he snapped back over his shoulder. ‘It’s not six o’clock yet.’
Yeah, like the house is ever going to take your word for it.
The chimes ghosted through the doorway. A sound that mocked him, and mocked anyone who entered The Tower. A gloating that resonated inside his head long after he ran for the door.
‘Come on. Some music. Happy music. Cheer up, Josanne.’
The straight road cut through mist-shrouded countryside. The speedo needle quivered on sixty. Civilization seemed half a world away. Surely, she should have reached a village by now? After driving for the best part of an hour she needed the company of the car radio. Only the presets were locked on to local radio stations in the London area. Static rushed from the speakers. A surge of distorted classical music drifted through the car then spluttered into crackles again. Josanne’s eyes flicked from the deserted road to the radio. In the subtle orange glow of the LED she saw frequency numbers scrolling forward as the radio’s circuits struggled to lock on to a new station. Anything with up-beat music, she thought. The LED screen flickered. With the pulsing of the orange glow it found a strong transmission.
‘Hell … you ARE joking?’
To the same rhythm of the flashing light came a pulsing sound from the car’s speakers.
‘Chimes?’
She stared at the pulsing orange light on the illuminated display. A row of zeros blinked where the radio station ID should be. The chimes rose in volume. A hard brassy note. An angry sound. One, two, three, four, five, six …
Josanne tore her eyes away from the radio. Just in time to see the road curve sharply to the right. In front of her bushes formed a spiky wall in the lights of the car. Before she could even take her foot off the accelerator the car slashed through them in an explosion of branches. With a cry she stomped on the brake with all her strength. Beyond the windscreen more branches whipped out of the fog to strike the car.
Don’t roll over, she begged, please don’t roll over. Even though the car’s wheels had locked they skidded across wet grass as if it were ice. An obstacle struck the side of the car with a crash that turned into a scream as it gouged the metalwork. Grass spewed out of the darkness in front of her. A bush loomed from the mist to vanish in splinters against the bonnet. A torrent of grass flowed at her as the car slid. Then a brown boundary of naked mud. Then a glistening plain of …
WATER! The word exploded inside her head. Her mind flashed back to the nightmare. Water inundated her room. It filled it. She’d struggled through stagnant liquid clotted with green weed.
Now the lake filled her field of vision. The car’s nose bucked up until all she saw were twin cones of light boring into the mist. A moment later the nose dropped as the car bellied down on to the lake with a splash that sounded like thunder.
CHAPTER 20
Water sounds. Like dozens of sucking mouths. A slurping, gluttonous noise. Josanne kept her eyes closed. The chimes were silent now. All she heard above the water sucking at the car’s body was a sizzle of static from the speakers. Cold air filled the car. At any moment she expected the water to gush in as it sank down toward the lake bed. The car tilted slightly as it settled deeper.
Josanne opened her eyes. The headlights still burned. She blinked at what she saw. Fog. That same fog as before. Afraid of upsetting the delicate equilibrium she turned her head very slowly to the side window. Rivulets of water still ran down the glass from where the car had explosively made its entrance into the lake. From what she could see in the car lights the lake’s surface had the appearance of dirty chrome. By now the waves from the splash had subsided to ripples; even those were smoothing out. Could the car really stay afloat? Slowly, Josanne turned her face back to the windscreen. She was afraid any sudden movement on her part would capsize the car. Then the lake would burst in through the windows with the same savagery as the stagnant water burst into her room. She bit her lip. That nightmare of just a few hours ago bore all the resonance of reality. She couldn’t help but recall the influx that had swirled her round and around until her head reached the ceiling. The flood level had risen until the air gap had gone; when she’d gagged for air water gushed down her throat into her lungs. In the nightmare, I drowned, she told herself. The water poured in and it killed me. And what about Kym? She’d told Fisher that she’d dreamt she’d been murdered. Now Kym’s vanished. Cold tides of unease washed through Josanne. Shivering from scalp to toes, she peered out through the car windows. Water surrounded her. Moving as cautiously as she could, she eased the wiper switch so it would make a single pass across the windshield. The rubber blades swept by, scraping away beads of water and strands of weed. At least she could see a little more. The lake stretched in front of her. The headlights illuminated perhaps forty yards of it until the fog swamped the light beams. In fact, all she could see beyond the car was water. She couldn’t make out any banks. Was it a lake? Or could it be the river that they’d crossed on the ferry. That’s a menacing expanse of water. Swollen by rain the river would carry her out to sea. The sudden surge of panic choked off her breath. For a moment she had to struggle to control her fear so she could breathe again.
No, you’ve not sunk yet. The water’s still. It isn’t the river. Even so, if this is a lake … Josanne pictured the car sliding beneath the surface to tumble in slow motion down a hundred feet to the lake bed. Bubbles would vent in silver clouds from the windows. There at the lake bottom huge black eels would worm through a jungle of weed. She imagined them sliding hungrily through the vehicle’s broken windows to where she sat strapped into the seat.
Carefully, Josanne gripped the door’s lever, pulled it until the mechanism clunked, then eased open the door. No inrush of water. The car remained stable. The surface of the lake met the car’s bodywo
rk just two or three inches below the sill of the door. When nothing calamitous happened, Josanne unbuckled her seat belt then reached into the back where Fabian had left his black umbrella. It was the kind used by business executives to prevent rain from touching their expensive hand-tailored suits. To avoid rocking the car she moved in slow motion. She lifted the umbrella over the passenger seat, transferred it to her other hand, then as she held it by the cane handle, she inserted the steel point into the water. Gently she lowered the umbrella so the surface of the lake swallowed the gleaming steel. Deeper. The fabric began to disappear. When a foot of the umbrella had been consumed it stopped. Josanne pushed harder. There was the sensation of penetrating a couple of inches into soft mud, then that, too, stopped. Josanne let go of the umbrella. It remained standing upright in the lake. She laughed. A sound of sheer emotional relief rather than amusement.
‘Oh God … it’s only a foot deep.’ With a sigh Josanne rested her head back against the head restraint. ‘You’ll never drown in that. Not in a hundred years …’
CHAPTER 21
Fisher met Fabian at the bottom of the stairs.
Fabian held out his hands. ‘Not a sign of her. You?’
‘Nothing.’ Fisher switched off the flashlight.
‘My guess is that Kym fell out with Adam and Belle, so she decided to pull this stunt.’
‘You think she’s just sulking somewhere?’
‘I’ve seen worse.’
‘You’ve got to be joking, Fabian. You mean she’s been hiding for hours on end without food?’
‘Something of the like.’ He spoke dismissively. ‘Now. I’m going to fix myself a hot drink.’
