She neared the gap in the door as carefully and as quietly as she could, but this wasn’t easy for she was breathing way too fast and way too loud for the quiet of the house.
At least it felt that way.
She slowly placed an eye to the slit in the door as a strand of her hair danced in front of her face, like a puppet on a string, as she breathed in and out.
Then, she drew in a sharp breath.
The sound she’d heard wasn’t that of the wall unit being turned on its side, but that of photo frames and paintings smashing onto the stairs, and cartwheeling down to the front door.
She could just about discern shattered glass on the steps, the corner of a photo frame, and the partial dazzling smile of a photo.
Ashley stared at the damage, as her heart clawed at her chest. It wanted out, as did she from that house. Somebody was in there with her, and whoever it was, wanted to scare her by knocking down those frames.
And, it worked.
She was terrified.
Thus, hands to mouth, to stifle her hyperventilation, she took a step back from the door.
Creek!
Someone was on the stairs.
Oh God!
Fear pinpricked her skin, and her whole body began to tremble.
She knew she had to do something. She knew that if she wanted to survive, she would have to take action now, but her terror was stronger than her will to survive.
If you don’t move now, Ash, you’ll die here!
Hyperventilating, and shuddering, she slowly replaced her eye to the slit in the door, and instantly wished she hadn’t, for there, in the gloom of the stairwell, stood the shadow of a man.
She yelped, instinctively, pushed the door shut, and turned the key.
She was under no doubt that whoever was out there was not her friend, but her enemy.
She backed away from the door and was parallel with the desk once more. The room was chillingly silent, except for the blood pumping in her ears.
She listened carefully, but the house was as still as a tomb. Even the world outside seemed to have disappeared behind a sheet of noise proof glass. What happened to the cars, the people, and the overhead planes?
Is he out there? What does he want? Maybe I imagined it. I didn’t imagine it. Someone is out there. I can feel their presence! They’re waiting for me!
Oh God, save me.
No sooner had she processed those thoughts; she sensed someone behind the door.
She couldn’t explain how she knew, but she knew, someone was standing right outside the door and they were listening to her pounding heart, her shallow breaths.
She backed further into the room.
And then it began, at first so quiet that she thought she was imagining it. Then, her eyes, like a director’s camera in one the most horrifying of movies ever, zoomed onto the key in the lock where, her now dark-accustomed eyes, could see that it was rattling!
Help me. Please. Somebody help me.
The rattling grew in strength and sound until the key fell out of the lock, and to the carpet.
Terror had swallowed Ashley’s scream before it emerged from her mouth.
Who are you? Leave me alone! Leave me alone!
She looked around the room; there was nowhere else to go. She was trapped in here.
Then she spotted the rain-soaked window.
She moved over to it and looked outside; the rain was falling on a shiny wet city. She could see a car in the distance.
There was hope!
Maybe she should open the window and start screaming. One of the neighbours was bound to hear her, surely. It might even scare the intruder away, but what if it didn’t? What if it made them even more determined to get in there, and do her the same unspeakable harm that they had to Jackie?
It was a subconscious thought, but the idea that Jackie had been murdered seemed most logical in that moment.
A banging on the door snapped her head around. Her whole body was shuddering in short acute spasms, her nerves were taught, and where she had been freezing just minutes before her body now burnt perspiration.
Oh, God.
Whoever was out there had started banging on the door now. Slow at first, then progressing into fast, violent, and loud impacts that threatened to knock the door from its frame.
There was no time to think; Ashley opened the window and thrust her head outside; the scent of fresh, rain-drenched air was a momentary comfort, for it symbolised freedom.
However, the sensation was temporary as she took in the roof that, from the window, sloped down towards the guttering where rainwater gurgled, noisily, down a drainpipe.
Using the bedside table as a stepladder, she stepped carefully up, out of the window and onto the slippery tiles.
Instantly, the rain began its assault as a cold wind bit into her flesh and tugged at her hair once more.
Despite this, she stepped away from the window.
She had no idea where she was going, nor did she care, as long as she was out of that room, no longer a trapped animal.
The banging seemed to have stopped, but Ashley wasn’t sure if this was merely because the sound was being drowned in the din of rain on roof tiles.
She didn’t care.
She just wanted away from there, now, and preferably without any broken bones.
She looked across the rooftop to the roads below and the safety that they represented. Then she looked at the lights blazing in windows all around her.
Where were all of these people? She wanted the opposite of when she had arrived there, she wanted them to stop hiding behind closed curtains and take an interest in her plight.
There’s a woman on a bloody roof for God’s sakes! What’s wrong with you all?
She was so frustrated she wanted to scream, but something stopped her, as if doing so might compel her pursuer to shut her up.
Instead, she slowly inched her way forward, holding onto the arch summit that ran the length of the building, being careful not to slip.
She considered the choice: the side down towards the back garden, the tree and the slabs of the patio, or the concrete of the front door.
Which way? Back garden or front door?
Neither of the options was appealing.
In the back garden, anything could happen to her, since she would be hidden from the eyes of the main street, and the rest of the neighbours. At the front of the house, whoever had followed her up to Jackie’s room, could simply stroll out of the front door, and be waiting for her as she descended.
Which brought her to her next dilemma, how exactly was she going to get down?
She could feel rain water dribbling down her belly. Her sweater was soaked through and all of her extremities were beginning to numb.
Thankfully, she’d seen the practical advantages of changing into jeans and trainers before embarking on her amateur detective adventure.
She glanced back as rain soaked hair slapped at her cheeks; nobody had followed her out of the window.
Have they gone? Maybe they thought I’d scream and attract the attention of those bastards, who are so wrapped up watching their bloody soap operas that they can’t see a woman clinging for her life, on a fucking rooftop! Jesus Christ, won’t somebody help me!
But Ashley had to face the fact that she was alone, and that if she did scream, her pursuer might indeed come for her.
Maybe they had already scampered off somewhere but what if they hadn’t? What if they were just biding their time? Waiting for the inevitable, waiting for her to fall off the roof and to the ground, where she would without a doubt break bones; and that was if she was lucky.
Then it occurred to her; the tree in the back garden. It would be dangerous, but it was a possibility.
She glanced back at the window; still nobody following her.
They could be waiting for me, down there.
Regardless, and with soaked strands of hair dangling in front of her eyes, Ashley sat down and, much to her own asto
nishment, began to inch her way towards the edge of the roof.
The wind hissed at her, and the cold was starting to settle deep into her bones, constricting her chest. But she resolved that there was no other way but forward, towards the salvation that was the branches of the tree.
She reached the edge of the roof with a sense of petrifying helplessness; if one of the tiles slipped, she would have nothing to grab, nothing to stop her fall and she would plunge down to the patio.
The branches of the tree came into view. Mercifully, because there were no leaves, she could see exactly which of the thicker branches could potentially take her weight.
She estimated that the first suitable branch was approximately six feet from her, which meant she would have to literally jump off the roof in order to reach it, as she fell.
She looked around; still nobody following her and still nobody outside, nobody walking their dog, nobody whose attention she could attract.
Just you and that tree, Ashley.
Carefully, she inched her way forward and the patio came into view.
The cold hard slabs were approximately fifteen to twenty feet below her, a vision that made her queasy.
To the left and right, she could see the light spilling from the patio doors of both next-door neighbours, and she considered screaming out to them, but even if they heard her, would they even bother coming to her aid?
She’d lost count of the articles she’d read. Surveys conducted in Harrison’s own magazines outlined a frightening sign of the times that here, in the city, people would sooner turn the other way than get involved in something. The pages of newspapers were all too often awash with have-a-go heroes, losing their lives to save others.
She glanced at the gnarled branches of the tree. There was salvation in them, but Ashley knew she would have to stand up in order to get sufficient thrust to reach one that could bear her weight.
Oh my God, there is no way. Oh no, I can’t! I can’t! I don’t have any option; I can’t go back in there. I can’t do that either!
“HELP!” She screamed into the night. “HELP ME! PLEASE!”
The words just came screaming out of her mouth.
“HELP ME!” she yelled so loud that her voice choked in her throat.
Nothing.
“SOMEBODY HELP ME, PLEASE! SOMEBODY!”
Just the dinging of rain on tiles.
Tears joined the rivulets of water washing down her face. There was only one way she was going to get out of this. Only one way she was going to get down.
Ashley wept, loudly and angrily, as she very carefully began to lift herself into a crouching position.
It was a treacherous feat, but one she was managing very well until a tile slipped from beneath her.
She lost her balance and fell backward, starting off a landslide of tiles that crashed, loudly, to the patio below.
One by one, as each tile fell, it took Ashley’s foothold with it, and there was absolutely nothing she could do about it.
She slid, helplessly, towards the edge, screaming as she went.
In seconds, she was sliding over the guttering.
It scraped up her right side, all the way to her arm, until she finally managed to grab a hold with her left hand until, suddenly, she was kicking the air beneath her feet, as the exertion of the acrobatics snatched the next scream from her throat.
Slowly, she managed to grab a hold with the other hand, but the strain was taking its toll on her aching arms, as she hung dizzyingly high from the hard stone of the patio.
She grunted at the pain, as the rain pummelled her face.
“Pl…please,” she uttered, through the strain, “Somebody, please help me! Please!”
And that is when she heard it.
It sounded like bending metal, and it was accompanied by a popping sound.
She turned her head sideways, and her fears were confirmed; the guttering was coming away from the building, and the popping sound was that of the fixtures, wrenching free!
“Oh...no,” she breathed. “No…… help me… somebody.”
But the strain on her body was so great that she could just about breathe, let alone call for help.
POP!
“No!”
There was more bending and Ashley felt her body fall a few inches.
POP! POP!
A few more inches.
“Help somebody…” she groaned. But her words were whispers in the pouring rain.
POP!
She slipped further and now could see that from her far left, the guttering was hanging loose. Slowly, one by one, the fixtures were relenting and eventually when too many had been lost, she would fall.
POP!
The ground was getting closer.
She turned her head to the tree, but the branches were too far away, she would never be able to reach out to them. “Oh God… help me please... somebody help me!”
POP! POP! POP!
In quick succession, the rest of the fixtures gave way.
Ashley screamed, and kicked her legs, hopelessly, as her body plunged, in one pendulous motion, towards the patio furniture where the cold hard stone slabs, that she had been dreading, reached up and smacked her in the face.
She lay motionless as the rain bathed her. Her numb body slowly registering the pain which helped bring her back to her senses.
My legs hurt, Are they broken?
She tried to move them, it took some effort, but they moved.
Thank God.
Then, she slowly lifted her face from the pavement, and flinched, as a searing pain carved across her face, and sank into her skull.
She looked up into the rain, as blood trickled down her cheek, to see the guttering swinging in the wind.
Thankfully, it had broken her fall, by swinging her to the ground instead of dropping her.
She had made it. She hurt so badly that she wanted to cry, but she was alive.
She willed her body to stand, but couldn’t.
Let me sleep. No, get home first! Get safe! No, sleep.
She strained hard to focus and eventually her vision came back, long enough for her to see something that, despite her condition, scratched fingernails down the chalkboard of her back. She was looking directly at the patio doors, into the kitchen, and what she saw froze the blood in her veins.
There, in between the blinds that adorned the patio doors, was a shadow, and it was watching her with a pair of expressionless, cold blue eyes that seemed to glow in the dark.
Such was the malevolence of the unblinking glare, that it transfixed her, as much as it suffocated the breath from her lungs.
She tried to scramble to her feet, to run, but she couldn’t. A sickly merry-go-round sensation gripped her.
Within seconds, her face met the hardness of the slabs once more.
Then, a shadow drifted over her body, and the world went black.
27 TV Studio
Abigail Palmer tried hard not fidget as she sat in the makeup chair. The vanity lights were blinding, the air conditioning seemed to have packed up and she was finding it hard to breathe.
And she had pretty much felt that way ever since she received the call yesterday, and was asked to fill in as host on the chat show; Peter Denham and Co.
The show pulled in a seven million audience and the usual host, Peter Denham, was adored almost as much as the celebrities he interviewed.
Unfortunately, Peter was stuck in Sri Lanka. He was scheduled to return to London this morning, but his flight was grounded when the airport received a terrorist threat, which lead to the cancellation of flights in and out of the country.
Abigail Palmer, a thirty-three-year-old investigative reporter, with a few series worth of current affairs programs on her resume, was the only person they could find at such short notice. She’d also produced a few Denham specials that focused on interviewing key leaders from around the world.
The network wasn’t exactly enthralled with the impromptu appointment, but she was
the most appropriate person according to the show’s executive producer. In his opinion, Abigail was a familiar face for the audience, and also had some knowledge of the format of the show. Therefore, it was a choice between putting her on, or cancelling one of their hottest bookings since Madonna.
“Five minutes!” somebody yelled.
Receiving the call yesterday had been very exciting, especially when she found out who exactly she would be interviewing; one of the most famous celebrity couples since Brad and Angelina; Darren and Leticia Aaron–Stanton.
However, as they counted down to the On Air sign, things were a little different; Abigail could feel butterflies in her stomach, and the need to pee was ever present.
“Abby!” a voice boomed over the intercom, “can we have you in your seat, please?”
It was the director, Harry James, a veteran of television, a no-nonsense perfectionist who, according to the makeup lady, strenuously opposed replacing his friend, Denham, even if it was only for one evening. He insisted that the producers postpone the show, but they refused on the grounds that it would be a logistical nightmare to rebook. That and the fact that they had already spent thousands of pounds on television promos. They also pointed out that, as per his contract, Harry James was obliged to direct tonight’s show, whether he liked it or not.
This was according to the makeup girl, who not only cleaned and applied makeup, but laundered as much gossip as her machine gun mouth could manage.
The girl also insisted, not unlike the chauvinistic bastard in the control booth, on calling Abigail, Abby.
She almost slapped the fussing hands away, and carefully stepped her way through a minefield of cables, and a squad of technicians.
Whatever happened to health and safety, Jesus! Who gives a shit about health and safety? Okay, calm down. Just ignore what the stupid cow told you. So that arsehole up there hates your guts. What do you care? Just do the job…
“Ah at last,” the voice boomed over the sound system.
Breathe.
She took a deep breath, “Where would you like me?” she asked, squinting through the set lights to the control box at the back of the studio.
Unspeakable Page 19
