by Adam Nevill
Determined to find the man’s behaviour hilarious, Knacker started a slight bouncing of his buttocks on the bed. ‘He was doing that fing, that fing, wiv his face. Classic it is. Shits everyone up. When we was in the Scrubs he—’
Fergal turned and thrust his face close to Knacker’s. ‘Shat it,’ he said in a slow, deep voice.
Knacker did. He must have been ten years older than the younger man, but was clearly intimidated by Fergal. And Knacker now tried to maintain his smile, as if to drag his confederate back into the camaraderie, while proving to Stephanie that it was all harmless role play. She wasn’t fooled, and not even Knacker seemed as menacing or problematic any more compared to the younger man.
There was something terribly wrong here, with them, with them being here. Not just inside her room, but inside the house. She sensed a disconnect between the vast inhospitable building and this pair of unstable men sitting on her bed. They were the most unusual and absurd landlords. And they weren’t even from the Midlands.
How did I get here?
Surreal but dangerous, without a shred of humour she could glean, the situation wasn’t making sense in comparison to anything she’d ever experienced. Nothing did in the building. Even without the voices and the crying women it was bizarre. It was a mad house and she felt as if she were the only sane thing here … the only clean thing, civilized thing.
She’d already swallowed the large glass of wine and the effects expanded her imagination into an ever more sinister darkness. It rendered her mute; her confusion was becoming unbearable. And what was Scrubs?
Her mind was made up; it would be stupid to remain in a building with Fergal, let alone Knacker. She’d seen enough, wanted to get them out of the room fast. She needed to call a cab to take her to New Street Station, and then start putting in calls to her friends while on the move back to Stoke. She found it staggering that she was even still here, again, in this building, a place that refused to settle into a recognizable condition. She worried that her despair, apathy and listlessness, that came from being exhausted and demoralized, were now her biggest enemies.
Fergal pulled a comical facial expression and nodded in Stephanie’s direction while keeping his eyes on Knacker. ‘This the best you could do?’
Knacker suppressed a grin which suggested they privately shared a joke about her.
Seeing her reaction, Knacker struck his cousin’s thigh gently as if to kill the jest because it had gone too far. ‘Just helping a girl out, ain’t I. She’s doing her best. Trying to get by, like. I respect that. These is tough times.’
Fergal turned his head in an exaggerated fashion, as if he were a ventriloquist’s dummy operated by the older man, and stared at Stephanie with his mouth open, feigning idiocy. He crossed his eyes. When Knacker spoke again, Fergal swivelled his head back in the older man’s direction, his big mouth still hanging open.
‘She ain’t finding much work, like,’ Knacker said. ‘Struggling. Nothing we ain’t seen before.’ When he noticed his cousin’s face mocking him with the imbecilic expression, he shouted, ‘Cut it out!’
Stephanie stood up. She needed to get them out of her room. ‘I need to get ready. Early start.’
Fergal swung his face back in her direction, a hideous, mocking, wrecking ball of a head. ‘Don’t let us stop ya.’ They both found this funny and started laughing, Fergal in that deep, forced manner, Knacker with a hissy titter through his big lips.
‘Not much of a party, is it?’ Fergal said.
‘She ain’t the partying type like we’s used to, mate,’ Knacker replied, as the horrid nature of their coercive double act tried to take shape in her room.
The entire world felt criminally hostile. She thought of what she had read about rich people retreating into gated communities and prohibitively expensive areas of the country, and why they sent their children to private schools and Russell Group universities. To never brush shoulders with this, ever. Society was splitting, was less cohesive than ever, like her dad had said. The rich created the inequality and then fled the scene, or so he had constantly told her. She’d wondered what happened to all those people who got left behind, because they had no money and couldn’t defend themselves – like her.
Victims.
‘Mind if I skin up?’ Fergal asked, his voice suddenly softer, even polite, as though another personality had risen to the surface.
‘No. Don’t,’ she said, as if the appearance of drugs in her room was an invitation for terrible things to take place.
Ignoring her, Fergal took a Golden Virginia tobacco tin out of the pocket of his dirty jacket and opened it. Removed a packet of extra-long cigarette papers, a ball of skunk weed shrink-wrapped in plastic, a lighter. His movements were deliberately slow, if not purposefully antagonizing.
‘Bit a draw. Can’t beat a bit a draw,’ Knacker said.
Stephanie stood up. ‘Stop!’ She was surprised at the strength of her own voice.
They shared her shock and looked stunned, mouths open, smiles gone, eyes blinking.
‘I don’t like this,’ she said quietly, and her voice was shaking. ‘You’re making me nervous.’
‘Nervous?’ Fergal said after a long uncomfortable moment when no one seemed to know what to say. ‘Nervous?’ he repeated with a frown, and then forced a stupid laugh from deep inside his stomach. Another role, another voice. He thought he was the joker of the pack, only his material, like him, stank.
‘I fink we is outstaying our welcome.’ Knacker rose, smiling, hands outstretched, like he was trying to stop a fist-fight in the street. ‘No harm done. Everyfing is cool, yeah. Just a bit a fun, like. I apologize. We never meant to frighten you. Not our style that. Makes me feel a right twat. I’m ashamed.’ His act was delivered with such sincerity that she almost believed, for half a second, that he was genuinely contrite.
Fergal packed his gear away, clutched the wine bottle and stood up. Then looked at the wine bottle in his hand, still frowning, as if he was surprised to find it there.
‘Leave it with her, like,’ Knacker said, now playing his version of the man of manners and expansive generosity, and with such enthusiasm that Stephanie wanted to scream with laughter. ‘It’s hers. I give it her. House warming present. There you go, darlin’. Have a drink on us. In peace. We will take ourselves elsewhere.’
Fergal grinned and showed his discoloured teeth. ‘And get caned.’
The fact that they were leaving filled her with so much relief she felt unsteady on her feet.
Knacker hovered by the door. ‘No one gonna bovver you in your own room, like. Not that kind of house. This is totally on the level, right? You know that. Yeah? Yeah?’ he repeated as he ushered his gangly cousin out of the room. ‘Just a misunderstanding, that’s all. But there’s something I need to speak with you about. I was going to mention it earlier…’
Her face must have dropped back into despair so dramatically because Knacker cut himself off. ‘But it can wait, yeah. Til tomorrow. But you is gonna wanna to hear it, like. In the morning, I’ll tell ya. But an answer to your troubles ain’t far away, like. On the level, yeah.’
‘Yeah, totally legit,’ his cousin chimed in from the darkness of the corridor. ‘Much money is going to be made. Very soon. Right here.’
Knacker grinned like an excited boy. ‘That’s right, yeah. Tomorrow, darlin’. Have a glass a wine, courtesy of the house. Put the box on. No one is gonna bovver you no more. You’s can relax now.’
His apologetic reassurance was starting to grind, but she was baffled about what they might be up to. She thought them capable of anything and nothing at the same time. She wondered if she should call the police and … say what?
Stephanie hurried to the door and attempted to push it shut. But a large, dirty trainer appeared and stopped it closing. Fergal’s face thrust back into her room so quickly she gasped.
He looked up at the ceiling and at the walls in a mock conspiratorial manner and whispered, ‘Don’t worry about them. They can
’t hurt you.’ Then he slipped away, into the unlit corridor, gently pulling the door closed behind him.
TWENTY-THREE
Stephanie sat on the bed and stared into space. It had been two hours since Knacker and Fergal had left her room, but Fergal’s final comment had eclipsed her lingering horror at having to endure their company.
Fergal knew something about the strange nature of the house. The same thing she half-knew, suspected, denied, suppressed, and ultimately resisted; suspicions more than facts that were prone to being side-lined as soon as she left the building, because of her desperation to earn money to get out of there. But Fergal had made an admission she’d been unable to prise out of Knacker. So why had he admitted to what was tantamount to the building being haunted?
Had he?
She recalled the tall, thin figure leaning into the ground floor door.
What was that about?
She wanted to believe the two men were merely socially inept, unaccustomed to the role of landlord, and unable to rent out the rooms because of their awful natures. Or perhaps there were actual people living here too: a girl next door, a Russian girl upstairs, a smelly man on the ground floor, a woman somewhere below the bathroom? Illegal immigrants? Such an idea would actually bring her comfort. And maybe Fergal had been referring to the other tenants?
Or perhaps something far more sinister was at work inside the house, something the cousins were able to ignore, or even colluded with for reasons not yet disclosed. Maybe something had happened here that they were covering up. The latter scenario she tried to deny and repress, because it was an idea best considered once she’d permanently removed herself from the address. Nothing here was certain, but if she were honest with herself, the McGuires now frightened her more than anything she’d heard through the walls, under her mattress, or sensed sitting upon her bed in her first room.
‘They can’t hurt you.’ But we can. Was that the subtext of Fergal’s parting shot? And that horrible, angry stare: was that an act?
Knacker was evasive, disingenuous, quick to anger if she hinted at what she’d experienced, but he was a bullshitter, playing second fiddle to his maniac, druggie cousin. She knew that much now. She sensed that Fergal considered her a nuisance while Knacker was keen for her to stay. Money. She couldn’t bear to think that Knacker’s motivation could be anything else. Unless he was preparing the ground by circling her, working on her, hoping to erode her resistance to his concealed intentions. Amorous intentions. Stephanie stopped the train of thought before it brought her closer to nausea.
She went and checked the corridor outside her room.
Empty and silent; the rooms either side of her own emitted no light from beneath their respective doors, and no sound. Her instincts persisted in suggesting they were unoccupied and had been since she’d arrived at the address.
So what made the noises?
From the next floor up, seeping down the stairwell from the landlord’s flat, came the distant thump of a bass drum.
She thought of her remaining friends in Stoke, none of whom she had heard from in a few months. She was still without the internet; the connection was impossibly slow on her old phone, and her stepmother, she suspected, had disabled her laptop before she left home. Val hadn’t been able to stand her using it, though Stephanie was never sure why. The machine had not worked since she left home and she’d not had enough money to get it fixed. Her friends must all communicate on Facebook, Skype and Twitter. Either that or no one called her any more. Stephanie hoped they still thought of her. Their silence might simply be the result of their preoccupation with their own struggles, while they waited for news from her. Is that how it worked with home town friends? When she’d torn out of Stoke she hadn’t looked back. Which now felt like a horrible mistake.
If her three friends in Stoke couldn’t accommodate her, she would have to tolerate the situation at Edgehill Road for a bit longer. And endure what was inside the house. Or spend what she had at a hostel. How many nights would £120 cover? Maybe a week until it was all gone. She’d then have to work every day next week to pay for the following week, or she’d have no money and nowhere to stay come Friday.
Maybe if she stayed outside the building all day Saturday and Sunday, without spending much money, that might help. She could stay awake at night and take naps in a park. And if she refused to open her door to Knacker again, and only spoke through the door, he might get the message.
She’d only had a nightmare last night. Hardly surprising. But at least there had been nothing in her room. Nothing under the bed …
Stop now!
The confused voice in the bathroom, that may or may not have been a recording, was just a voice and offered no physical threat.
This room had no disused fireplace either.
The girl next door – the presence, if that’s what it was – only cried and walked up and down the hall.
It’s not so bad. Psychological damage she just might have to risk for the time being.
Even thinking in these terms, and weighing up so many earthly and unearthly considerations, struck her as absurd. But then her life was just that. She was being coerced into thinking in terms of the impossible and the unnatural to such an extent, she wondered again if she were schizophrenic. Her reality was becoming warped and she was hearing voices. Maybe even seeing things that were not there.
Stephanie checked the time: ten forty-five p.m. Too late to call one of her friends back in Stoke. But she would do, in the morning, to assess her options should she need to leave here in a hurry. If one of them would take her in tomorrow, on Saturday, then tonight could be her last night here.
Her room still smelled of Fergal and the uncapped wine. She opened a window. Turned her duvet around and upside down, so the part he had been sitting on would be near the foot of the mattress. Took the wine bottle to the kitchen and emptied it down the sink, all the time wincing at the memory of Fergal’s uncouth mouth gulping from it. She tried not to touch the glass where his mouth had been.
Back in her room the travel clock told her the time had now passed eleven p.m. She set her alarm for eight in the morning. Once she was up she could head into the city centre and check in with the stores, pubs, bars and cafés where she’d already left her CV.
Leaving all of the lights and the muted television switched on, Stephanie undressed to her underwear and climbed into bed. She lay still and continued to think herself into ever decreasing circles to avoid any contemplation of another night in the building.
TWENTY-FOUR
The footsteps that slowly roused Stephanie from the dream moved swiftly down the corridor outside her room and continued inside her room, as if the door had been left open.
As she came awake a second set of heavier footsteps followed the first, as if in eager pursuit, but stopped outside her door, suggesting reluctance, or merely an inquisitive pause.
With her own sharp intake of breath loud inside her head, she broke from the last tendril of dream and burst out from under the bedcovers.
The sound of her shock appeared to bring everything to an abrupt end – the footsteps as well as the hurtful words that had been chattering from her stepmother’s mouth in the dream; accusations accompanied by horrible grins on the faces of people she hadn’t recognized, who’d all sat around a black table. People holding hands in a dark space with candles set in distant corners. Yet the surreal vestiges of the bad dream were dwarfed by the realization that someone may have entered her room.
The footsteps.
The ceiling lights and floor lamp were still on, and it didn’t take Stephanie long to discover she was alone between the black walls and mirrors. The door to her room was still closed. She remained upright in bed, hands pressed to her cheeks, her chest rising and falling like she’d just struggled to get to the surface of deep water.
In the distance she could hear Knacker’s dog barking at the rear of the house. It now sounded like a bellow combined with a cough.
Feelin
g her sanity was at stake, she quickly tried to rationalize the nightmare. Being intimidated by strangers in a room with black walls had a clear connection to the evening she’d endured earlier, and being tormented by her stepmother was a constant.
But the footsteps … About those she was all out of ideas.
What little calm she felt at being awake was soon obliterated.
In the room next door the heavier set of footsteps returned to life, bumping about the room in an uncoordinated and clumsy fashion. Pisshead feet. Shit-faced feet you hide from.
Stephanie turned to the wall her bed was pressed against. She hadn’t heard the door to her neighbour’s room open, but the sound of thumps and clatters now travelled through to her, as if determined hands had begun to scatter small objects and cast aside items of furniture in the room next door. The footsteps would occasionally pause, then speed up and stagger in another direction to continue what sounded like someone vandalizing the room.
When the footsteps banged towards the wall nearest to her, Stephanie flinched and seized up, and knew she would let go of a scream if whoever was next door managed to continue their antics on her side of the wall, which didn’t seem impossible.
She heard mattress springs creak and a rubbing of fabric directly against the wall, followed by a woman’s small cry announced into the very bricks and plaster that divided the two rooms.
A bang of wood and a clatter of bedsprings followed, and Stephanie received the impression that a bed had just been raised from the floor and then dropped. The woman must have been hiding beneath the bed. Her neighbour’s cries worsened, giving the impression that the woman was now being pulled, or dragged across the floor and deeper into the room beyond.
The whimpers became sobs, until the woman grunted softly after each muffled thud and fleshy slap she received; the blows were all too audible and interspersed with the sound of the man’s heavy feet adjusting their balance as he went to work.
