They looked like…eyes!
Shit!
He lifted the flashlight but it flickered and went out.
He slapped it, instinctively.
“Come on!”
He jumped off the ladder, and attempted to point the light once more, but each time he lifted it, the beam faded.
“Fucking thing!” He said, angrily, slapping it a few times, before lifting it again.
This time it worked, albeit with a scary strobe effect, that yielded a series of terrifying snapshots that planted a daggers of terror into the pilot’s heart.
The first flash revealed a shape.
The second, an outline.
The third illuminated the profile of a man, who was standing in the corner of the room, watching.
Then, the light gave up once more, plunging the room into pitch black.
“Shit!” He staggered back.
The eyes were moved towards him, glowering in the dark.
He backed further.
“No…”
Faster…
“No!”
Faster…
“NO!”
He tripped, and fell to the floor.
The eyes drifted over him.
Instinctively, he lifted his torch in defence, just as the beam flickered, temporarily revealing a presence, dressed in black.
“JESUS!”
The pilot scrambled backward, and then flipped onto all fours. He rushed forward and slammed, head first, into one of the large wine racks.
He looked back; the eyes were right behind him!
In a blind panic, he tried to climb the rack, as if it were the ladder to his salvation.
It jangled, clinked, creaked and moaned.
“NOOO!” he screamed, heaving himself upward, clinging for dear life, but he didn’t get far.
The rack gave way under his weight, and then, he was falling backwards until…
SLAM!
…he hit the back of his head against the cold stone floor.
Seconds later, thick glass smashed into his face, drowning him in wine. Then, a weight, as heavy as the world itself, landed on him, pinning him to floor.
It pressed and squeezed the air out of his lungs, to a cacophony of smashing glass and glugging bottles.
Blood frothed and oozed out of the pilot’s lips, dribbled down his cheeks, and mixed with some of the finest vintages money could buy.
Back in the study…
Bass tried hard to ignore Mark’s urgent calls, but the natural investigative instinct in him made him stand up.
“Where are you going?” Rachel asked, panicked.
“It’s okay. I’m just going to see what the commotion is all about. Make sure the DS is okay.”
“No, please, don’t go!” Rachel said, eyes wide with apprehension.
“I’m just gonna’ be in the hallway,” he said, reassuringly.
Rachel looked over, the door was open, and she could imagine Jason’s body lying, motionless, beyond the threshold.
“Oh please,” she said through trembling lips, “Please don’t leave me, please don’t go out there. He might get you.”
“Who’s going to get me?”
“That man.”
“What man?”
“The man I saw earlier, up on the landing.”
“Rachel, there’s nobody else here besides us...”
“…There is!” she said in a loud whisper, clutching onto his arm, like some kind of a crazy person, “I saw him.”
“Well, that’s even more reason for me to see if the Detective’s okay. You’ll be alright here, I promise. I’ll be right back.”
“No,” She complained, but Bass had already picked her hands off him, and was making his way to the door.
Rachel shrunk back into the sofa.
With only the firelight for company, she felt vulnerable and afraid.
She scanned the room. It was watching her. Hundreds of eyes scrutinising her shivering body, as she tried to disappear beneath her blanket.
She jumped when the fire crackled, loudly, summoning a legion of demonic shadows that danced wildly off the books and walls.
She looked back at the door, just in time to see Bass disappear into the hallway.
“No,” she squeaked, but it was too late, he had gone, swallowed up by the darkness.
Upstairs, in the bedroom…
“Rupert? Mr Harrison?” someone was calling.
Rupert opened his eyes to see Bass peering down at him.
It took him a few seconds to get his bearings. His cheek was stinging, and he instinctively touched it.
It had swollen.
“What happened here?” Bass asked.
“Where’s Ashley?” Was Rupert’s response, as it stood up to quickly and swayed.
The policeman caught him.
“Easy does it. Looks like a pretty nasty blow,” Bass said, holding onto him, and nodding at the welt on his cheek.
“Ashley?” Rupert looked at the bed, but it was empty. He rushed over to it, as if disbelieving his own eyes, as Mark came out of the bathroom.
“Where is she?” he asked.
“What happened here, Rupert?” Mark asked.
“Where’s Ashley?” Rupert continued.
Mark caught him arm and asked, seriously, “We were hoping you could tell us.”
Downstairs, in the study…
To Rachel, it felt as if Bass had been gone for hours when, in reality, it was only minutes. She didn’t want to be here, certainly not with the ever-present thought of Jason’s body in the hallway.
She had to wrestle, once again, with the urge to look at the open door; her terrified mind telling her that he was out there, watching her with that death stare.
The fire shifted suddenly. The flames darted to and fro, as if a giant was blowing on them.
Then she heard it, distant at first. It blew around the building, rattled the glass in the window and made the door creak.
It was looking for her; it growled down the corridor, howled down the stairs and exploded into the lounge, where it blasted her in the face with a gust of freezing air.
She squealed, and retreated further under her blanket as the gale swept around the room, rocking the chandelier, knocking down ornaments, and tugging at paintings.
Eventually, it found the fire. It violently shook the flames, as if choking them to death, until they were snuffed out, plunging the room into darkness, but for the glow of hot embers.
Rachel’s heart hammered as she remained still, frozen to her seat with terror.
The room had fallen silent. The only thing that could be heard was the squeaking of the chandelier, as it rocked above her.
Rachel’s trembling breaths were like a foghorn in the quiet of the space that that turned as frozen as the world outside.
Her whole body, that was just normalising from her earlier ordeal was, once again, shaking uncontrollably.
She shrank back, as far as she could, into the safety of the couch, and then peeked out from behind her blanket, as the silence continued.
She felt alone, but she knew she wasn’t.
She sensed she wasn’t.
Somebody else was in the room with her. The same person she’d seen upstairs.
Slowly, tearfully, she turned her head and looked across the moonlit skeletons of furniture, to the wide open door.
There was nobody there.
She was alone.
“R a c h e l!” the whisper was sharp in her right ear, just as it had been earlier when she was trapped in the closet. She leapt to the opposite side of the sofa.
She opened her mouth to scream but, like a nightmare, it emerged as a whimper.
Now she could see - right where she had been sitting just moments before - Jason, wrapped like a Madonna, in the shimmering white, blood stained, table cloth. His eyes were closed and he was mouthing something.
Rachel’s heart thumped like a runaway train as she pushed back into the sofa, the arm digging i
nto her, like a giant claw.
She tried to scream but nothing came out.
Then, Jason’s eyelids opened, but instead of beautiful eyes, there was just two black cavities.
“NOOOOOOO!” the scream finally emerged.
She leapt out of the sofa, fell to the floor and twisted onto her haunches to see that Jason, the apparition, had gone; the sofa was empty.
She stared, eyes brimming with terror, as her convulsive shivering continued.
She was in the middle of the room now, with no furniture around her for protection.
Like a performer on stage, she was alone, spot lit by the moon that was streaming in through the large window.
Silence reigned.
Then, it returned, this time much stronger. The gale ripped around the room, tearing paintings from walls and launching ornaments into the air.
Rachel screamed and ducked, scrunching herself into a protective ball, as the projectiles flew overhead.
Silence again.
She didn’t dare move; she was numb with terror, paralysed by fear.
Seconds ticked by. The only sound was the chinking of chandelier crystals.
She was afraid to open her eyes, afraid of what she might see but, eventually, she found the courage. Slowly, she raised her eyelids to reveal a room littered with debris; shattered ornaments, broken paintings.
She looked at the open doorway and considered making a run for it; she could be out of there in seconds.
But just as she was summoning the strength, just as her mind was willing her body to stand, a loud ear-shattering screech sawed through her nerves and the wall to her right exploded in a cloud of dust, as if an invisible truck had just slammed into it, generating fracture cracks that reached all the way up to the ceiling.
There was another screech; the same happened to the opposite wall, and Rachel was showered with splintered wood and mortar.
She was screaming, hysterically, now.
“Rachel?”
She looked up; Bass was standing at the door. His face a mask of bewilderment.
“Bass!” she cried out. Instantly, the door slammed shut, locking him out.
Then, there was a whooshing sound, and invisible hands picked up every piece of furniture and flipped it onto its side.
The desk, the chairs, the couch, all somersaulted and then fell loudly to the floor once more.
Rachel covered her ears and cowered into the rug as dust filled the air around her.
Seconds passed.
“Rachel!” Bass was calling to her as he punched the door.
She looked up, as invisible hands clawed books from the shelves, launching them into the air and to opposite sides of the room.
They rained down on her in a hail of pages.
The destruction continued until most of the shelves were empty.
Then, silence once more, but for the hammering and splintering of the door, until it burst open and Bass appeared.
He ran, and threw himself over her, in a protective gesture, just as the window imploded and showered them in a hail of tiny glass particles, that fell to the floor in a dissonant symphony of tinkles and jangles.
Nobody moved, as the fresh scent of the night rushed into the room and brought with it the sweet scent of freedom.
Upstairs, in the bedroom…
“Rupert, calm down and tell us what happened in here,” Mark said, as he watched Rupert pace the room, like a madman.
“I don’t know what happened. I came in here and…” he broke off when realisation dawned. He looked at the open balcony doors, “Oh my God.”
In that moment, a loud crashing sound travelled to them from downstairs.
The two policemen looked at each other, and then raced out of the room, but Rupert didn’t follow. Instead, he stepped out, onto the balcony and surveyed the polar landscape.
Below him, crosswinds created a blizzard of the snow-covered lawn, where a trail of footprints led to Ashley, draped in a blanket.
She was walking towards the lake.
“ASHLEY!” Rupert shouted. His voice echoing around the nearby forest, but she didn’t respond.
“ASH!”
Nothing.
He looked over the balustrade; the ground was about twenty feet below him.
There was only one way that Ashley could have left the room, and it was the same way he had used with his twin brother countless times before.
He climbed onto the balustrade, and grabbed the frozen trellis, which he used as a ladder to the ground.
He chased the footprints to the side of the lake, where he skidded to a halt.
Ashley was standing on the ice, motionless. She had her back to him.
A gale howled around them.
“Ashley?” he called, his voice suppressed, as if his mere presence would cause the ice to crack beneath her. “Baby, please come off there, please,” he said, trying to mask the panic in his voice, for he was suddenly overwhelmed by the memory of what had happened right here, years before.
“Please Ash,” he said, and waited.
Suddenly, the wind calmed, the trees stopped swaying, Ashley’s matted hair fell still about her shoulders, and Rupert could hear himself panting.
He waited.
And then, very slowly, she turned around.
Rupert gasped when he saw how, under the moonlight, her beautiful body had turned pallid blue. He wanted to rush over to her, he wanted to take her in his arms and warm her body with his. He wanted to take care of her.
“Rupert?” she uttered in bewilderment.
“Oh yes, baby,” he said with a big smile. Relief at her recognition spread through him. “Come off the ice, baby, please, come off the ice.”
“Where am I?” she asked, suddenly afraid.
Rupert reached out to her, “Just come off the ice, and come to me.”
But Ashley looked confused. Her face contorted into an expression of total incomprehension. She didn’t recognise where she was, nor knew what she was doing there.
Rupert, his whole body taught with tension, spoke calmly, “Walk over to me, baby.”
“…I don’t understand…”
“Just walk over to me, now!” he said more, forcefully.
Ashley looked down at her bare feet, her body, and then she looked at his outstretched arms.
She hesitated, but, slowly, began to move towards him.
“Oh yes, that’s my girl, reach out for me, come on baby.”
She kept her eyes on her bare feet, as she shuffled forward on the ice.
“That’s my girl,” he said, his voice coaxing, hiding the trepidation he felt.
She was moving painfully slow.
But inched closer…
…closer
And then it happened, just as it had many years before. He scanned the ice, but could see nothing.
Ashley was still shuffling towards him.
Had he imagined it?
No, the cracking sound was unmistakable. It was an awful, unforgettable, splitting sound that had haunted many of his dreams.
Oh sweet lord, please, no.
It seemed that Ashley too had heard the sound, for she had stopped and was looking around herself, in a panic.
“NO! Keep moving!” Rupert screamed. His eyes were wide with terror, for he could see it; like a giant arachnid, unfolding its legs, the cracks were actually appearing in front and reaching towards her.
“NO! ASHLEY! RUN! NOW!”
She followed his gaze, and saw the cracks snaking to her. She leapt away from them, towards Rupert, but he was still at least thirty feet away.
She reached out to him.
He reached out to her, “RUN!”
Fifteen feet…the lake was opening up like a wide mouth with jagged teeth.
“ASHLEY!”
But, it was too late.
Rupert’s faced drained of all colour, and his heart stopped when, suddenly, just like his brother many years before, she disappeared in front of him.
&n
bsp; “NOOO!”
He didn’t think, he ran and jumped straight into the water after her, and instantly lost his breath.
It took him a few seconds to make out his surroundings; it was dark beneath the water, the moonlight struggling to pierce the surface.
But then he saw her.
Ashley was near.
She was looking up at him. Her face, distorted with panic in the filtered moonlight.
He struggled, in the freezing water, to reach out to her. His muscles were seizing, his vision blurring, and the more he fought, the further she appeared to drift from him.
Deeper and deeper until…
…he felt something close around his hand, it was hers.
He pulled, but nothing seemed to be happening, yet her face was drifting closer, closer until it was level with his.
Their eyes met in the dreamy white washed world, where light beams danced in the water around them.
Then, she was moving, her body floating gracefully past him, until he could see her feet, and then nothing, but two blue lights.
They drifted towards him, like headlamps in the night; closer and closer, until they took the form of eyes, piercing blue eyes that slowly metamorphosed into a face, one that he recognised, his own.
The End.
Epilogue
…Rupert plunges his hands into the freezing lake water, yearning to make contact with any part of his brother’s body.
He stretches further and deeper. Further and deeper.
Just a few inches…
…closer…
…closer…
YES!
Contact.
He clutches his brother’s outstretched fingers, and then pulls, with all the strength he can muster.
Ben’s head emerges from the frigid water, a mass of shudders and splutters.
Rupert moves to heave him out of the icy well, but hesitates. Instead, he looks around. Nobody appears to have heard the commotion. Nobody appears to have heard their screams.
They are alone.
He turns to his brother, who is paralysed by the freeze, barely breathing.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and releases his grip, allowing his brother to slip beneath the surface once more.
Unspeakable Page 46
