by Adam Nevill
The first one to get inside the building began to speak from the hall downstairs. ‘… involved … you are … you said … not that simple … must understand…’
Bare feet scuffled upon the stairs, supported by further evidence of movement: a fumbling out there in the darkness, as if someone aged and blind was determined to find her. The tone of the voice from the stairs was stiff with accusation. ‘Not going … refuse. I said it. I said it … wouldn’t stop … and look … what happened … the lights … even listening?’
The first visitor to rise from the foot of Amber’s bed came off the floor quickly. She could not see who it was, but she heard the trespasser sigh as it reached full height. Thick polythene crinkled as the limbs flexed within their coverings.
‘What is the time?’
But it was not terror or shock that knocked Amber out of sleep. The smell of an old, dirty house from a past life, and the scent of those who had walked its corridors and cried out from behind so many walls and doors, gathered like a heavy black smoke and sank down to where she lay. And it was the stench of these things that choked her awake.
SEVENTY-ONE
Amber sat in the kitchen and watched the sun rise over the trees at the end of the garden.
She had been drunk. A half empty bottle of rum, dehydration and a feeling of seasickness was sufficient evidence of excess. And she had immersed herself too quickly and too deeply in the faces and the stories that were shut inside the study. So many familiar eyes, smiling out of the old photographs beside yellowing headlines, all but forgotten in the world beyond her doors, had made the recollections materialize beyond the reach of her control.
That is all it was.
No one who came close to understanding what she had suffered, and what she knew, would hold her to account over a nightmare endured at any time for the remainder of her life. And since post-production on the feature film had finished, she had not examined the story of 82 Edgehill Road, and her leading role within it, in any way similar to last night’s scrutiny. Post-production was a year distant. So the cause of her recent relapse was obvious. And when you are alone, as she knew so well, it just takes longer to calm down.
She turned on the radio, tuned it to a local station. She half listened to a joyous report of fecundity in parts of South Devon: the size of the soft fruits, tomatoes, potatoes, wheat, the market gardens in bloom like never before, the best harvest in decades. She watched the same headlines every night on the local television. The cheery news made her feel better. This was a good time, this was a good sign. She was in a place of beauty, of growth; she would be healed by nature, by the sea air, the sun …
But how could she lay to rest this uneasy suggestion, the one she’d failed to dispel, that the nightmare she had suffered was distinctly different to those she had experienced during the first two years that followed her escape from that place? And, in both intensity and clarity, the nightmare was an exception to the dreams she’d endured while at sea. Those dreams had been nonsensical, old fragments reviving and blending with current situations: Knacker capering around the ship’s decks, dressed like a teenager and trying to sell drugs to wealthy octogenarians; Fergal captaining a ship in dress whites, his gingery face grinning from beneath a peaked cap; The Friends of Light holding a séance at an adjoining table in a restaurant.
The scars of her experience had manifested in curious ways. The ruffle and rustle of plastic would never be mere background noise again; polythene had lost its utilitarian innocence three years ago. She would be unable to live anywhere within view of a late Victorian house; the very design of certain houses made her shudder inwardly when passing them in the street. She had run from rooms to prove her aversion to the smell of Paco Rabanne aftershave, which brought on anxiety attacks. Her first sighting of cut hair on the tiled floor of a hairdresser’s salon, where she had her own long hair cut off and the remainder dyed black, had made her nauseous. Dust was something she could not abide on the floor of any room she crossed. She would never again sleep in a room that contained a fireplace; they had all been removed and the chimney flues filled before she took possession of the farmhouse.
Most of her more recent dreams she only half remembered after she’d awoken, their traces mere lingering discomforts that ceased unsettling her when their obvious absurdity was consciously confronted in daylight. Some dreams still made her call out and cry in her sleep, but there were fewer and fewer of those now. The shock of the surreal scenarios had lessened as time flowed behind the new course she had set in her life; as greater distances moved her away from that place.
The dream last night had been different. It had possessed textures that dreams should not emit: scents, temperatures, sounds and voices too loud and clear to be produced from the muddle of an unconscious mind.
She had been inside the farmhouse, she was sure of that, but it was transformed into another building, and one she had also once dreamed inside and in just such a vivid way; she had experienced things inside that other place that were also impossible, as doctors and therapists and counsellors had told her patiently, in reasonable voices, and in so many soothing rooms.
The dream had come too easily, as if provoked by the mere act of thinking about the house and the dead girls, by letting her heart reach out.
What did I do?
Amber watched the clock on the microwave. As soon as it was fully light she would go out and … do something … drive. Drive anywhere. Maybe visit a nearby town or seafront, go to an aquarium, a zoo, ride on a steam train, idle along a beach, eat a cream tea, because she no longer wanted to be alone in her new home.
The motivation to leave the house made her angry.
Already?
She felt tricked by the farmhouse, as if it had retaught her contentment, but used the promise of happiness as bait.
Intent on a shower and change of clothes, she paused at the foot of the staircase and looked up at the smooth walls and rosewood banisters. Her stomach clenched on coffee and residues of rum. Her neck and shoulders tensed. She was apprehensive about climbing these stairs and walking deeper inside her beautiful home. Up there, inside the study, were the mementoes that would make her dream of terrible things, over and over again, in a place she wanted to be at peace.
It’ll never end because you won’t let it end.
Burn the fucking lot!
Fingers spread wide on her cheeks, she closed her eyes. At least one year had passed since she had felt like this; since she had felt this bad. She’d almost forgotten how bad it could be.
Was you finking you could just walk away, girl? That we wouldn’t find you, yeah? You is taking the piss, girl.
Yeah. Yeah. You owe us three years’ rent on that room. Ho, ho, ho.
Was you finking you could take McGuires for cunts?
Stop! Stop!
She opened her eyes.
Don’t let them back in. Not their voices. Never again. Because when she heard the squeaking of the rats that she’d put down in that shit-tip of a house, she would see the two cruel and bony faces in her mind again. She would open a dialogue, a discourse she had endured most every day for a year after she’d escaped them, as they chattered and cajoled and manipulated and twisted her mind. It had taken one year of cognitive behavioural therapy to silence their voices.
Amber climbed the stairs.
Halfway up she saw the dust: a large tuft of sooty dross lying insolently on a middle step.
SEVENTY-TWO
A memory of her driving instructor saying, ‘Who are you signalling to?’ irritated Amber and she switched the indicator off.
She’d passed her driving test two months before embarking on the first ocean cruise and now instinctively indicated every time she turned the Lexus, irrespective of whether there were any cars on the road. But anything that made you a bit safer was good; you could never have enough safety in your life.
She applied the handbrake and reached for the key fob on the key ring that hung from the ignition. As soon
as she depressed the button in the middle of the fob, a shiver passed through the metal bars of the gate at the top of the drive. The locks disengaged and the barrier began to open.
Back to the compound: home.
At the beginning, and now at the end of her first week she’d seen the same white car on the lane outside her home. She knew it belonged to the nearest neighbour, so was nothing to be afraid of. She’d never seen any other cars pass the house. Few motorists used the road anyway, which was fortunate because the tarmac was barely wide enough for one vehicle.
Glancing into the rear seat, she surveyed the results of her successful shopping trip that had concluded one hour before sunset. She’d spent a day moving between Totnes and Torquay and had set off back to the house at seven p.m. because of her aversion to driving at night. In the rear of the vehicle bags of fresh fruit and organic vegetables, bought at a farmers’ market, were neatly packed inside fabric bags-for-life; she kept the bags in the car to remove the possibility of ever having her shopping packed in plastic. Two ornamental stone owls destined for the patio of the rear garden continued in their ability to amuse her, as did the bedding plants, grow bags and stone pots she had bought impulsively, when suddenly overcome by the idea that she should make the house more her own.
Magazines and a good haul of books from Waterstones, plus a dozen DVDs and two HBO box sets of series she had missed while at sea, would account for a few weeks’ worth of relaxing evenings. Anything else she’d forgotten to buy at the start of the week rolled about inside the shoulder bag that had fallen into the footwell of the passenger seat.
The gate finished its shuddering arc and was now open. Amber released the handbrake. Out of another ingrained instinct, she took a glance into the rear view mirror.
The lane behind her was clear of traffic, but who was that standing at the side of the road, at the corner before the hedgerow curved out of sight?
Amber flinched and removed her foot from the clutch pedal. Was thrown forward in her seat. The car was still in gear. The engine stalled. A light flashed and something beeped in alarm on the dashboard, the sound adding an impetus to the shriek inside her mind. Her hand scrabbled for the ignition key to restart the car quickly.
The Lexus rumbled alive. She turned her head and peered through the rear windshield.
The lane behind her vehicle was empty.
‘No you don’t.’
She hit the switch for the electric windows on her arm rest. The windows rose with a whir. She reversed onto the road to face the direction in which she’d seen the figure in the lane, then squeezed the key fob to close the gate.
One hand on the steering wheel, the other thrusting the gear stick up to third, Amber revved the engine and drove up the lane to the curve in the road.
There were no inlets to the fields opposite her property; the hedgerow was too thick to climb through and there was no footpath, just a narrow drainage ditch, a thin grassy verge, and then tarmac. When she’d first seen the lanes around her home she was reminded of bobsleigh chutes. If someone was standing in the lane, just before it bent out of view, they should still be on the road and visible the moment she rounded the bend.
Would the man, because it had been a man, a very tall man, even have had the time to move out of sight while she turned the engine over and reversed? Maybe, but he would have had to move fast to remove himself from sight. Even on such long legs it would have been a stretch. Perhaps he had dropped down into the ditch to hide himself. Maybe a man could lie flat and be invisible from the road. But on closer inspection, in a surveillance sharpened by anxiety and fear, she could see that the grassy drainage trench was not deep; not even a rabbit would escape her view into the depression.
Amber slowed down and put the Lexus into second gear to take the bend. She held her breath as her car nosed around the curve in the road.
She was presented with a view of a long empty incline that rose to the top of the hill she had so recently descended. There was no one in the road.
But she had seen the figure of a man. A man standing on the grass verge looking directly at her vehicle. He had been watching her, there was no doubt in her mind; such a figure was not something she could have merely imagined.
Or was it?
Amber continued to the first section of road wide enough to turn her car around. The manoeuvre became a ten point turn, her judgement and control of the vehicle spoiled by her state of mind. She stalled the Lexus again before she managed to move the car back in the direction of her home.
During her slow return journey to the farmhouse, she scrutinized the hedgerow on either side of the road again, looked for a break in the foliage through which a gangly figure might have slipped into the surrounding fields, where it might then crouch down and grin, pleased with itself, after having intentionally shown itself to her.
Because he has found you.
The dream. A sign.
Such was her desire to get back onto the front drive, and to shut herself inside the walls of her property, that Amber shot the Lexus through the open gates as soon as the metal bars clanked and wobbled three parts open, nearly scraping one glossy black door on a gatepost. From here on, the motion sensors would trip the alarms if anyone clambered over the walls or the front gate.
Amber parked close to the front door of the farmhouse. Abandoned her shopping and scrambled out of the Lexus to get to the porch. Eyes flitting in her sockets to take in the front garden, trees, and the top of the walls, she let herself into the house. Then closed the front door.
In the hall, which she had never been so pleased to see, she realized that in her panic she had left her handbag in the car. Which meant the pepper spray was back inside the Lexus. She remembered the spares in her bedside cabinet, close to a bed she had, until recently, slept so peacefully inside.
Mobile phone clutched in one hand, the fingers of her other pawing at the panic button set inside the silver locket that she kept around her neck on a chain, Amber ran for the stairs. And nearly fell at the top.
The sight of a mouse with a long black tail would not have surprised her as much as the sight of the dust on the top step: grey, furred, and no bigger than a golf ball, trailing tendrils of what appeared to be black hair.
He’s inside.
Amber depressed the panic button. Then stood still as the alarms began to scream in the hallways, both upstairs and downstairs.
Fumbling down one wall, her balance shot by fear, she moved towards her bedroom and realized that in the din of the alarms she’d be unable to hear the sounds of an intruder.
Get to the bedroom. Get it out. Get it out. Get it out.
It took a reckless, unthinking impulse to get across the threshold of her bedroom; she worried he might be standing behind the door, or lying on the floor at the side of her bed. She would have to get mirrors positioned in every room of the house, like road safety mirrors, so she could make sure that each room in the house was empty before she entered.
There was no one inside her room.
Nonetheless, she could not get to the bedside cabinet fast enough to unlock her armoury. On the ring that contained the keys for the house and car, her frantic fingers located the key for the locked safety deposit box.
She unlocked the box, flipped the lid. Then tore the black Beretta out of its grey spongy moulding; an illegal handgun she had acquired online, after working out what to ask for on a website forum.
Safety catch off, the gun gripped in one hand, she scooped up the can of pepper spray from the drawer and tucked it into the back pocket of her jeans, then ran to the door to lock herself inside the bedroom. The shriek of the alarms muted.
Her phone was vibrating; she hadn’t heard the ringtone because of the alarms. She answered the call. It was the security firm.
‘Sorry, I am not the home owner,’ she said to the operator who’d barely had time to recount his minimalist spiel. But what she had said was enough: the code for a rapid response.
‘Can you give me you
r location at the property?’
‘Master bedroom.’
‘Please lock yourself inside.’
‘Have done.’
‘Is the intruder inside or outside the premises?’
‘Not sure.’
‘Is the intruder still on the premises.’
‘Don’t know.’
‘A team will be with you shortly. Please stay on the line.’
* * *
It was dark by the time the two men from Pretorian Security finished their search and drove away.
From inside the kitchen, Amber had watched their torches in the fields beyond the rear wall of the garden, the lights jogging up and down as the two men were forced to run behind their dogs while searching for any sign of an intrusion.
The security men, or ‘operatives’, had eventually returned to the house to report that there had been no intrusion; none of the alarms had been tripped on the perimeter, which meant no one had climbed over the gates, or the walls that circled the grounds.
The two men were convinced, and convincing, when they told her that a swift manoeuvre through the side of a hedgerow that impenetrably thick, ‘to keep even panicking livestock off the road’, was ‘highly unlikely’. Though they did concede that whoever she had seen may have been able to vault the hedgerow from the road, and that ‘the foliage had been sufficiently elastic to resume its previous shape’.
The operatives were very professional and took her claim seriously. She was a good judge of what people thought of her, and she was sure that both of the men recognized a very frightened girl when they met one. The alarms and motion sensors were tested and deemed in perfect working order, and two patrols would now inspect the outside of her property that night. There was nothing more they could do.
But he had been outside, and there had been an intrusion inside the property.
This.
Amber had arranged the second offending ball of dust on a piece of newspaper on the kitchen counter. One she could accept as an anomaly; two signified an unnatural occurrence.
