No One Gets Out Alive

by Adam Nevill

  To her knowledge, the door of the room at the corridor’s conclusion had always been locked. A distant series of bumps now issued from inside, through the door, and into the fusty air of the old passageway, as if someone had fallen to their knees heavily. Only the suggestion repeated itself again and again as if they were always falling, standing up, falling.

  One of them.

  She shivered. The cold registered through her clothes and around her face as she edged along the wall to the first door: the one to her old room. Readying the bottle of acid in her hand by uncapping it, Stephanie listened outside and dropped the white plastic cap at her feet.

  Thump. Slap. Thump. Interspersed with moans, female moans, as though someone was having sex. Was Fergal raping Svetlana before he killed her? The fact the idea no longer shocked her was the only thing that did shock Stephanie. And without another thought, she turned the handle and shoved the door open. It banged against the foot of the bedframe.

  Stephanie walked into the room. Fergal turned his head to look at her. His face was tense with concentration and what looked like annoyance. He was standing near the head of the bed and leaning over the mattress. He held a pillow over Svetlana’s face; his other hand was raised to deliver a punch. He was beating the woman to death, with his second choice of hand, while trying to suffocate her at the same time. The fact that Fergal had damaged his right hand on Knacker the day before was the only reason Svetlana was still alive.

  The room swam. Stephanie took in the sight of the naked female body, the head obscured by a pillow, the arms and legs pulled out from the body in a star shape and secured with thick leather cuffs at the four points of the old bedframe. Her old bed. She swallowed and tried to quell the urge to be sick.

  From the fireplace came the monologue of a distant female voice.

  Under the bed, unseen hands tore at plastic, as if on behalf of the helpless girl above who could move nothing but her fingers and toes.

  Behind her head, by the windows and small table, nervous feet padded back and forth, back and forth. And whoever moved with agitation was whimpering. She threw a glance behind herself; there was no one there.

  The skin of Fergal’s face smoothed out with surprise as he took in Stephanie’s bloodied jeans, mired hoodie, and what had flecked and speckled her face in the struggle downstairs and had now dried. He didn’t speak. Just squinted as if trying to fathom out how she had come to be standing beside the bed with a jar of acid raised in one fist and a shard of red glass in the other.

  ‘That tosser can’t get nuffin’ right,’ he eventually said, with a slow shake of his head.

  His reaction to whatever had bustled into his mind next so surprised Stephanie that she hesitated. Fergal’s face screwed up and he began to cry, ‘You ain’t havin’ her! You ain’t havin’ her! She’s mine!’

  His voice was thick with tears and his cheeks became wet and shiny in seconds. And in his distress and grief Stephanie saw a much younger, boyish face, and one so contorted by anguish she thought her heart might break. She wondered what kind of life this man had endured until this point in time. And she sensed, the permanent damage of not being wanted. For this man, who had also once been a small boy, perhaps rejection had been comprehensive from his first breath.

  She swallowed. Forced herself to remember how dangerous he was. Made herself look again at the woman he was murdering. ‘Get away from her!’

  Fergal released the pillow and stood up to his full and unnatural height: a dirty scarecrow man of bones, in filthy Gore-Tex and blackened denim, who wept like a ten-year-old boy in a world so hopeless and loveless that the very consideration of this world was unbearable. And Stephanie knew in a heartbeat what the Black Maggie had done to the man. She’d finished what life started.

  ‘You ain’t havin’ her! You ain’t!’ He took a step towards Stephanie.

  She showed him the bottle. ‘I’ll use this, you bastard!’

  Fergal snarled and threw himself across the room at her.

  Instinctively, she stepped backwards and cringed.

  One huge dirty hand swiped through the air and grabbed her shoulder so hard she nearly fell over. When his head was no more than three feet from her own, she jerked the bottle at his big, mad face.

  The liquid came out in a silvery string, striking Fergal beneath one eye and spattering across his nose, cheek and forehead. He’d stepped into the stream and its near instant sting brought a sudden halt to the forward momentum of his long body. Stephanie jumped backwards to avoid the liquid ricochet.

  Her second jab with the bottle didn’t produce much liquid and what came out disappeared between Fergal’s knees to soak into the carpet.

  She was never entirely sure what happened next. Something that felt like a brick struck one side of her head, turned her body around completely and sent her crashing into the fireplace. She moved to her hands and knees with her hair in her eyes from where it had come loose from her pony tail. Inside her ears was the sound of a distant kettle whistling above deep water. Which only cleared to fill her head with the sound of an animal’s roar. An ape in terrible pain.

  She turned and saw Fergal, snapping from the waist and lowering his head to his knees, then throwing his head backwards at the ceiling before breaking himself in half again at the waist, trying to throw something appalling from his face. His long-fingered hands covered his features and extended over his head and into his hair, a mask of spidery white bone gripping his head. He sounded like he was trying to breathe and shout through a snorkel as he fell about the room. He glanced off the bed and then dropped through the doorway.

  When he wrenched his hands off a face that Stephanie could not bear to look upon, he screamed, ‘You ain’t havin’ her!’ before scrabbling to the stairs.

  Stephanie’s hands were sticky and when she looked at them she saw deep cuts on the palm of the hand that had been holding the glass shard. Her skin looked like uncooked pastry sliced on top of a pie. The mirror-knife had broken inside her hand as she fell. Fergal must have swiped her off her feet with a punch.

  Outside, Fergal grunted and banged his way down the stairwell.

  Stephanie looked at the bed. The girl’s bare breasts were rising and falling.

  On her knees and then her feet, Stephanie staggered to the bed.

  A tiny voice was talking somewhere inside the room. From where? Close by. It took her several seconds to realize it was the police operator still speaking on the phone inside her pocket, imparting instructions.

  Stephanie pulled the pillow off Svetlana’s face. ‘I’m here. I’m here now. Alright. I’m here…’ She only stopped jabbering when she saw the damage below.

  Stephanie crawled around the bed and uncuffed the woman’s ankles and wrists. They were beautifully pedicured and manicured she thought, uselessly.

  Once freed, Svetlana didn’t make any attempt to remove her limbs from the open bonds. Stephanie climbed onto the bed and slipped her arms underneath the semiconscious woman and pulled her up and onto her own chest.

  Stephanie flopped back against the wall and slipped a hand under Svetlana’s chin. Gently moved her head backwards so that Svetlana would not choke on her tongue.

  A distant police siren came into Edgehill Road.

  Something was hissing into the carpet. It smelled of a chemical burn.

  With a shaking hand, Stephanie fished the phone handset out of her pocket and said, ‘Ambulance. She’s hurt. She’s really hurt. Please … please hurry.’

  NINE DAYS IN HELL

  ‘And if the roses of your garden sang a weird song, you would go mad.’

  Arthur Machen, The White People

  SIXTY-FOUR

  THREE YEARS LATER

  Home.

  My name is Amber Hare. My name is Amber Hare. My name is Amber Hare.

  The bed Amber awoke upon was like a vast winged armchair. Emperor sized and upholstered in leather and chenille: comfortable, protective and nurturing. The mattress was handmade, and constructed out o
f fifteen hundred pocketed springs. In collusion with sheets and linen crafted from the softest cotton and layered flannel, the bed produced a comfort as close to a mother’s arms as anything manmade. She was never in a hurry to leave the bed’s embrace and warmth each morning, had forgotten how deep, restful and unbroken sleep could be. Because it had not been any of those things for the last three years.

  By the end of her first week in the farmhouse, and her first week back in England for ten months, having spent fifteen thousand pounds on the bed and its accessories was bothering her less than it had at the beginning of the week.

  Do people actually live like this?

  Six days in residence, six whole days and nights without going any further than the garden and the fragrant interior still surprised her each morning. Right from the moment she rose from the bed, an array of scents wafting through the expanse of open space and misting over every pristine surface seemed to rush forth like eager servants to welcome her into the new day: recent paintwork, fresh plaster and the astringent traces of cut timber mingled with the pollen of new fabric released by the waffle-cream curtains and thick rugs.

  Can this be mine?

  If she chose to sit for a while in the living room or the dining room to admire her new home, the Aspen leather furniture that moulded her body released little welcoming puffs of exclusivity. And moving through the building put her within reach of an ostentatious tang of polish that dispersed from the hand-scraped, tobacco oak floors in the hall and ground floor rooms.

  She never opened the windows of the new house, all recently triple-glazed and fitted with the best Saxon locks. She kept them closed and locked and told herself that she would not countenance the idea of airing the house because these aromas should be preserved. She also knew this was not the sole reason for keeping every point of access secure.

  Amidst the scents of the discreetly luxurious she continued to observe the same ritual: wake naturally, make coffee in the kitchen, and then leisurely tour the freshly renovated farmhouse, finishing in the study. From the study she would walk to the new bathroom. Shed her briefs and t-shirt and step into the granite-tiled wet room. To shower for so long her whole body steamed until it was time to be swallowed by a white towelling robe.

  After nearly a week, the various floors within the farmhouse began to issue a reassuring sense of permanence beneath her tanned feet; a stability combined with the novelty of being in a new place, particularly comforting when she feared she had become addicted to transience.

  On this, her sixth morning in residence, with a mug of hot coffee in one hand, she moved again, carefully and patiently like a discharged patient returning home after a long illness, drifting through the four bedrooms on the first floor. Virgin carpets, as thick as bear fur, engulfed her feet to the ankle bone.

  The floors of the house were too precious for shoes. There would be a rule about shoes. She wanted nothing from out there getting inside. Not that she was planning on entertaining anytime soon. But only on this day of her occupation did she realize that the interior felt less like a show home and more like the best room in a top hotel that she had spent a week inside. Soon it might even feel like a home.

  Amber promised herself she would never take the house for granted; she would always notice and appreciate everything inside of it. She had never lived anywhere like this before, nor had she ever expected to.

  When she passed through the doorway of the room selected to be the study, air sharpened by the scent of the new leather chair stung the top of her nose. As usual, she made herself look at the view, while toying with the idea of what came next: what she needed to revisit inside the room.

  Through the broad double windows she watched the wind ruffle the lawn and move through the trees bordering the garden, gently swaying the tips of the branches. A seagull hovered and trembled high above, as if temporarily trapped against an invisible force-field, until it followed the current of air in the opposite direction to glide away. Before the bird sank from view its large beak opened, but Amber heard no cry.

  Inside her home, the atmosphere would remain still, cool and silent in any weather. Not a single draught had prickled her skin in any part of the house.

  Sealed.

  Even the loudest sounds generated by the outside world seemed unable to penetrate the pristine walls, new doors, or the reglazed windows in their deep casements. Yesterday, from the kitchen windows, with her freshly pedicured feet spread on the flagstone while she made an espresso from her new Grigia coffee machine, she’d watched a helicopter pass over the house. She had strained her ears to catch the faintest whop-whop or buzzy grind of the rotors, but heard nothing.

  Opening the doors of the house was like leaving a cinema to return to the grip of a briefly forgotten air temperature, and an immersion in the hectic energy of the street – what people called the real world.

  Looking out across the gentle contours of the maize fields beyond the foot of her property, she wiped her eyes. She felt safe.

  She would stay here.

  This is mine.

  Home.

  SIXTY-FIVE

  By the time Amber had carried all of the treasury boxes into the study and distributed the files through the brushed steel cabinets, and after she had finished attaching all of the selected clippings, pictures and notes to the cork boards mounted on the walls, the view outside her windows had dissolved into darkness and turned the panes of reinforced glass into mirrors.

  There was no light pollution from neighbouring properties, because there were no neighbours. There were no primary road routes for three miles either and the closest lane was unlit. The nearest town, Shaldon, could not be seen from anywhere on her property. Even if someone stood in the lane connected to the front drive, the house would not be visible to them.

  The original brick walls of the farm yard, further reinforced by an inner ring of mountain ash trees, planted years before, entirely concealed the house from the north-facing front and the building’s two sides.

  The occupants of the nearest houses had been investigated by a security consultant on her behalf. There were three farming families, and sundry locals comfortably retired. A sparse population that had failed to raise a single criminal record, and not one of them knew who she was. There would be no house warming either. She was entirely alone.

  A relocation agency had found the property through a search arranged by her solicitor. The agency had met her requests for total privacy with an exactitude that startled Amber the first time she visited the farmhouse.

  Almost one year ago, when the first of her three ocean cruises ended, she’d been driven to the house from Southampton docks by a chauffeured car service to approve the agency’s find. After five hours of deliberation and a consultation with an architect, Amber decided this was indeed the place that would become her first home: a building close to the settings of some of the happiest periods of her life, defined by holidays with mum and dad in Goodrington and Torquay, way back when she was eleven, before her mum died, and probably the last time in her life she had been truly happy.

  Even after all that had happened during the last three years, the very idea that she could now make bespoke requests to discreet professional firms, established to serve a wealthy clientele, still retained the novelty to swamp her with diffidence and feelings of unworthiness. Though of late she was less surprised by such things. After years of making do and never having much money, she was quickly becoming accustomed to what money concealed and altered beyond recognition. She was even starting to feel less guilty.

  Only after the work on her new home was complete and the security system operational, did Amber finally return to the house to find it transformed beyond recognition. Six days ago.

  Nine months of the house’s new life had been spent under the auspices of master builders and interior designers, who partially rebuilt, and then completely renovated the building’s interior to her taste. For the entire time that others searched for her future home, and then r
emade the farmhouse, she had been at sea, though Amber had not left land to forget. While sailing around the Mediterranean, the West Indies, the Florida Keys, and the Eastern Seaboard of America, she had sought and found distance. And then she’d returned to land to resume the search.

  For him.

  For it.

  For them.

  Amber turned in her chair and faced her reflection in the window. A pale face amidst short, blue-black hair peered back at her. She’d never be blonde again.

  Out there, beyond her reflection, beyond the boundary of her property, she’d found that she could happily watch the land undulate towards the coast of Torbay for hours, a book open upon her lap and a pot of tea beside her. Three miles of fields used for maize, flanked by pasture for grazing sheep, that she surveyed in the same way she’d so recently surveyed the great tumult of heaving oceans.

  On the first day, when she walked in the garden, the nervous bleat of a ewe had carried to her from the distance. She’d seen birds in the trees and on her lawn, but no animals inside the walls. Nothing much bigger than a fox could get inside the grounds without her knowing.

  The security system had been installed by a firm endorsed by members of the royal family and a myriad celebrity clients. Any form the size and weight of a small child upwards would activate the halogen security lights and a series of motion sensors connected to alarms that would get a local security company on the phone in seconds, and to her door in twenty minutes guaranteed, if she wished.

  The front gate of the grounds could only be opened from inside the house, or with a key fob if she was on foot, or sat inside her Lexus RX 450 on the lane outside. Every point of access could also be locked automatically by Amber from inside the building. On security she had placed no limits on budget.

  She reclined her seat before the desk in the study. Sipping at a chilled glass of spiced rum and Coke Zero, she attempted to wipe her mind clear of the emotions and thoughts and memories that had amassed during the day, while she reopened the files and fixed key visual materials to the walls. Alcohol always helped.