Leave This Place

by Spike Black

  Silas squinted, looking back and forth between the chair and the photo. “Yeah, you’re right. It’s the same. You think he used to live here?”

  She looked over at the chair and could almost see the old man sitting in it, upright and stern-faced. “Ugh, I don’t know, but that is seriously creepy.”

  Silas laughed. “Don’t be silly.”

  Oona glanced back at the photo. His eyes. So dark. She couldn’t look anymore.

  It was precisely this kind of thing that caused her imagination to work overtime. It was why she gave up watching scary movies years ago, despite Silas’s protestations. He could call her silly all he wanted, but she just knew that when it came time for bed tonight she would picture the old man sitting in the chair in the corner of the room, watching them as they slept.

  Her stomach knotted so tight that she winced.

  If she thought she had any choice at all then she would have left, right there and then. But Silas needed his holiday, and God knows they needed some time away together. Things had not been easy of late, with Silas stressed out of his mind at work. Besides, she’d said no to Antigua for this. He’d never forgive her if she made him leave.

  Silas studied the photograph and turned to her, mimicking the old man’s sour face in an exaggerated and ridiculous way, and she couldn’t stop herself from laughing.

  She so envied how her husband saw the world in such a matter-of-fact way. How he failed to register that there was anything in any way creepy about the photograph. It was astonishing to her.

  That kind of creepy stuff had simply never bothered him.

  3

  They ventured out shortly after noon, wrapped up well against the merciless snap of a moorland winter. A looping blanket of fog rolled off the dales, enveloping them as they navigated the dirt track toward civilization.

  Silas growled his disapproval through chattering teeth and Oona met his glare. “You know, I believe it’s hurricane season in the Caribbean, anyway.”

  He grunted. “Could we not at least have taken the car?”

  “Silas, you can’t holiday on the Yorkshire moors and then drive everywhere. That’s not the point.”

  He looked around him at the rough ground that had been swallowed by close fog in every direction. “No, much better to go by foot and admire the view.”

  Any holiday where he had to wear a scarf and gloves when he went outside was no holiday at all, in his opinion. He warmed himself up with thoughts of hot pub food and a few pints of Yorkshire ale. Maybe Oona was right - there was a reason not to drive, after all.

  After about a mile (although Silas’s feet seemed to think it much farther), they came upon the farmhouse where they’d collected their keys on arrival. Perusing the online brochure before the trip, Silas had envisioned the cottage and the farmhouse alongside each other. He’d imagined being able to pop next door if ever they needed anything. It was quite a shock to discover how wrong he had been.

  The farmhouse was a Grade II listed property with vines of ivy crawling up the red brick to underline the casement windows and slab roof. The building’s picture perfect prettiness gave it an otherworldly feel amidst its desolate surroundings.

  A woman waved from the kitchen window as they passed. It was Aggie, their landlady, a portly, gray-haired woman with a beaming smile and several chins. Silas and Oona waved back.

  Following the track down the hill for another quarter of a mile brought them to the main road through the village. The center of Oxthorpe consisted of rows of quaint, stone built cottages, a village green, a red phone box and a pub. Silas felt like he had traveled back in time fifty years, and he imagined the place looked very inviting in the summer months.

  At that moment, however, it was cold and creepy, the only visible inhabitants a murder of crows on the ornamental village sign. It pained him to know that if he had just put his foot down, they’d be sunning themselves beside an infinity pool four-thousand miles away.

  They arrived at the pub, announced in a crescent of gold letters above the entrance as The Waymarker Inn, and Silas saw what had to be his two favorite words in the English language scribbled on a chalk board: Hot Food. He could almost smell the grilled grub in the air as he wrapped his gloved fingers around the door handle. “Things are looking up.”

  He pulled on the door. It was locked.

  “Or not,” Oona sighed.

  Silas tried the door again. “It is lunchtime, isn’t it?”

  “They’re northerners. Maybe they all go to bed in the afternoon, like the Spanish.”

  “I froze my balls off for this?” He rattled the door against the frame. “They can’t write ‘hot food’ and not deliver. That’s tantamount to human cruelty—”

  He tapered off as Oona held a finger up to her lips. “Listen.”

  Footsteps in the distance, heavy and uneven. Silas whirled, following the sound.

  A figure emerged from the fog: a middle-aged woman with clouds of crazy black hair, rocking from side to side and dragging one leg behind her as she walked. She was dressed in a dirty sweater and jeans. No outer layers of clothing, despite the cold.

  “Oh look,” Silas said. “It’s Yorkshire’s Next Top Model.”

  Oona turned to him. “Shall we ask…?”

  He tried to communicate absolutely bloody not with hard eyes and a stiff shake of the head.

  But Oona went running after her anyway. “Excuse me…”

  Silas reluctantly followed.

  “The pub’s closed. Do you know if there’s anywhere else to eat in the village?”

  The woman stopped in her tracks and stared, as if she, too was surprised to see other people.

  Oona persevered. “A restaurant, or…”

  A cackle burst from the woman’s weather-beaten lips. “By ‘eck, no.”

  “Of course not,” Silas said. “That would be ridiculous.”

  Oona shot him a look.

  “You could buy summat at t’ shop,” the woman suggested.

  Silas nodded. He noticed she had a few coarse hairs on her chin.

  Oona brightened. “There’s a shop?”

  “Aye, dear. Did you think we all lived in t’ Dark Ages?”

  Silas glanced at Oona for permission to speak, but she shut him down with a glower.

  “No, we just didn’t see it.”

  The woman pointed. “Down’t road. In’t alleyway before church.”

  “Great. Thank you. You’ve been very helpful.”

  The woman waved. “Sithee.” She shuffled off, then turned back. “You staying at Cairn Cottage?”

  “That’s right, yes. How did you know?”

  “Only time we get strangers round here’s when Aggie rents out t’ cottage.”

  Oona nodded. “I see.”

  “How long you staying?”

  “A week.”

  She raised her bushy eyebrows. “A week?”

  “Yes,” Silas said. “You know, seven days.”

  “Hah!” The woman’s eyes fixed on Oona. “Good luck with that.”

  She held the look a little too long, then turned and went on her way. Within moments she was consumed by the fog.

  Silas and Oona looked at each other in total bewilderment.

  ***

  They made their way back across the dirt track, each carrying a bag of groceries. Not a bad haul, as it turned out, and there was easily enough food to last the week. Aggie waved from the kitchen window again as they passed the farmhouse.

  “I’m not sure that woman does anything,” Silas said, maintaining his smile as he waved back, “except stand there waiting for passers-by.”

  Oona laughed. “If that’s true, she must wait an awfully long time.”

  Silas distracted himself from the cold by keeping his footsteps in line with the mohawk of weeds that ran through the center of the track.

  Oona absent-mindedly kicked stones, and Silas kicked them back. He could tell she was mulling something over, and he had a pretty good idea what it was.
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  “Silas?”

  “Hmm?”

  “What do you think she meant?”

  “Who?”

  “The woman. When she said ‘good luck with that’.”

  He laughed. “Who knows? I mean, she was clearly out of her tree.”

  “Really though, why would she say that?”

  Because it’s haunted, he thought, but he knew he could never say that to Oona. She’d want to go home straight away. “Maybe she knows how cold it is inside that place.”

  “Right. Yeah, that makes sense.”

  As they crested the hill, the fog had retreated enough that Silas could see Cairn Cottage ahead of them. From such a distance the two upper windows and front door were nothing but black squares embedded in blank gray stone. They gave the building the appearance of a face - despairing eyes and a permanently gaping mouth.

  A frozen expression of alarm, Silas noted.

  “Ah, there it is. Home, sweet home.”

  He remembered how the exterior of the cottage had looked in the online brochure - quaint, appealing, inviting even. Granted, the shots had been taken in summer and no doubt touched up a little, and maybe they’d used an award-winning photographer who knew all the right angles, but still. They really had done an incredible job of selling the place.

  Winter trees dotted the horizon, their bare branches pointing skyward and rocking gently in the breeze. Were they waving to him, he wondered, or drowning in the fog? Either way, it was an eerie sight and quite hypnotic. When he next looked back at the cottage, it was considerably closer.

  He saw something that stopped him in his tracks.

  Oona turned to him. “Silas?”

  A shape. At the bedroom window.

  He looked harder. Squinted. Tried to rationalize what he was seeing. Just shadows, perhaps. A trick of the light.

  And then he said something that he would come to deeply regret.

  Three words.

  Three little words that fell from his lips before his brain could engage.

  Three words that would cause so much trouble.

  “What is that?”

  Oona followed his line of sight. “Huh? What?”

  He flushed hot, realizing instantly what a terrible mistake he’d made.

  She looked back at him. “What am I missing?”

  He met her stare with raised eyebrows and what he hoped was an innocent face. “Hmm?”

  “Tell me. What?”

  He shrugged. Shook his head. Fought hard to keep his face impassive, but a slight twitch in his cheek threatened to give him away. “Nothing. Nothing.”

  Oona eyed him suspiciously. She looked up at the window.

  He watched her out of the corner of his eye with mounting dread. Held his breath.

  She turned back to him. “What did you see?”

  He gritted his teeth and glanced back at the window. It was empty. He exhaled. “I told you, it was nothing. Forget about it.”

  But Oona wasn’t buying it. Her face drained of color. “You saw something, I know you did.” She pointed. “At the bedroom window.”

  “What? No…” He registered the terror behind her eyes and knew that he had to do something. He held her look a moment longer. “Gotcha.”

  She stared at him, her mouth hanging open.

  He smiled weakly. “It was a joke.”

  “A joke?”

  “Yeah. Of course there’s nothing there. Boy, you’re so gullible.”

  She continued to stare, scrutinizing him, and for a moment he thought she was going to see through his lie.

  “Please,” she said. “Don’t do that.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Just don’t do it. Ever. You know how I get.”

  They reached the cottage, stepping from the track to the gravel driveway. “It was just a laugh.”

  She dismissed him with a shake of the head and marched up the path to the door. With her back turned, Silas glanced up at the bedroom window, his heart in his throat.

  The figure, he was relieved to discover, was not there.

  The figure that, with its drawn white face and thin frame, had looked remarkably like the old man from the photograph.

  4

  Despite her hatred of the place, Oona was pleased to be back at Cairn Cottage. Her bladder had been full for most of the return journey, and she had chosen to tolerate the discomfort rather than suffer the indignity of relieving herself on the moors. As she entered the bathroom and reeled from the stench, however, she wondered if she’d made the correct decision.

  She identified the source of the odor immediately: the heavily stained carpet. Never a good idea in any toilet, she thought, least of all one that had a turnover of new occupants every week. It may have only been a drop or two from each male guest, but the collected samples of stale urine had formed a noxious aroma that caused her to gag as she inhaled.

  Oona reached out to lift the lid of the toilet bowl and stopped, noticing the film of yellowed grime that coated the edge. Grimacing, she grabbed a wad of toilet paper and used it to winch open the lid.

  Reluctantly taking a seat (she hated using shared toilets, and only ever used public bathrooms when it was an absolute emergency), she felt a surge of emotion and gritted her teeth to stem the tears.

  They had been in Yorkshire for less than twenty-four hours and already she missed her home comforts and her clean, modern, un-spooky house. She had to wonder if she had made a terrible mistake in coming here. Six more days of this?

  But she couldn’t be fussy and she didn’t want to complain. Sometimes you just have to put up with these things.

  This trip was about Silas, and easing his stress. As much as he had tried to keep from her the details of what had happened, the physical toll on him had been shocking, and she had begged him to let her help. She had extracted some basic information, mostly about him not getting along with his colleagues like he used to, and she understood that. She knew from her own experience that it was rarely the job that got you down but the people you worked with.

  She tried to put a positive spin on her surroundings. Compared to the rest of the cottage, the bathroom wasn’t so bad. Okay, so the bathtub had a ring of grime around it and a rusted plughole, but it didn’t look wholly uninviting. As she finished up she decided that a nice, soothing bath was just the thing to put her in a positive mood for the rest of the day.

  She leaned over the tub and turned the hot faucet. Water pumped out in intermittent bursts before settling into a steady stream. She let the tub fill for a while, then ran her hand under the water and winced.

  It was ice cold.

  5

  Silas warmed his hands over the flames that burned inside the large stone fireplace. The temperature in the cottage had dropped steadily throughout the day, to the point that his toes were now numb and his muscles ached and his breath plumed ahead of him when he exhaled.

  He removed the poker from its rack and stoked the flames. Replacing the poker, he noticed a pair of black cast iron cats atop the andirons, staring grimly ahead with glass eyes.

  He looked around, taking in the room’s exposed beams, its patterned, swirling carpet, the paintings on the walls. The furniture consisted of an old Chinese coffee table, two vintage armchairs and a matching sofa upholstered in a green and red floral fabric. He recalled his long-dead grandparents having identical seats in their warden-controlled apartment when he used to visit as a kid.

  He dropped into an armchair and cracked open his book: Don’t Stress It! The Complete Guide to Mental Health and Wellbeing. Oona had found it while browsing the self-help section of a bookshop and bought it for him.

  She was big on that sort of thing, but it wasn’t Silas’s cup of tea. Not quite enough adventure on the high seas for his liking. Still, he’d promised her that he would give it a go, and now seemed like the perfect time.

  Not that he had been honest with her about why he was so stressed, of course. He could never tell her that. He’d given her some b
unkum about work piling up in his tray, his impending sergeant’s exams, and the asshole colleagues on his shift. He felt particularly bad about that last one. They were a nice bunch, really.

  He removed the bookmark and read a paragraph, before flipping back a page to refresh his memory. He found that he couldn’t recall reading anything that had come before, despite only starting the book two weeks earlier. He flipped forward and read the paragraph again.

  And again.

  (Screeee—screeee—screeee—screeee—)

  Quiet times were always the worst, because the bad memories carried with them an overwhelming noise that was impossible to ignore. The flashes of image and bursts of sound were like a mental battering ram, slamming relentlessly against the walls of his sanity.

  Silas slid his marker in the page and closed the book, chuckling at the peculiar irony that he was unable to relieve his stress because he was too stressed to read how.

  He heard the gush of running water coming from upstairs. Good for her, he thought. Making herself at home.

  He settled back in the chair and closed his eyes.

  (Screeee—screeee—screeee—screeee—)

  “We’ll draw straws.”

  That was how it always started when the alarm went off in the empty cell block.

  The alarm had frightened everyone enough times that Silas knew exactly how each of his colleagues would react. They all shared the same initial response on hearing that awful squeal - a stunned silence, looks of mock-horror, and a general open-mouthed amusement at their predicament - but then the familiar patterns emerged.

  Wendy always looked terrified, but she didn’t like to show weakness and was often the first to volunteer. Kelvin leaned back in his chair and took another bite of his chocolate bar. He was twenty-one, he was cool (or at least, that’s what he wanted everyone to think), and he couldn’t give a shit. And Roland treated it all as one big joke. A way to torture Maisie, the young Community Support Officer, by threatening to send her down there.