by Gerard Gray
Had I just seen a cat?
I about turned and got to my feet. The stairwell up to the room was narrow and dark. It was a part of the house that Karen didn’t venture into, so cobwebs had been left to grow unabated. My feet began to move forward, but within a couple of steps I had slowed, a disturbing feeling crawling up my spine. The top of the stairs looked dark, too dark. The morning sun had risen, but still there was hardly any light. Perhaps the blackout blinds were down? Yes, that was it.
No, that wasn’t it.
Something felt wrong.
A thought suddenly occurred to me. Had the cat been Tiddles? Had I just dreamt the whole thing, even the part about the cat? Oh please God, let it be Tiddles up there. I strained my neck, casting the dark cinema room another look. I better go check, just to make sure. She might be hungry.
My feet didn’t move, though, my eyes still firmly fixed on the top of those stairs. Sweat trickled down my side. I had a very bad feeling about that room. It felt wrong, as though something terrible were waiting for me just beyond the threshold… listening... breathing.
Hopefully it was just Tiddles, alive and well.
Within seconds I was at the top of the stairs, peering anxiously into an oppressive looking room. It was dark, the blackout blinds obviously drawn, but not entirely; a single shard of light was shining across the room onto one of the walls. I took in a deep breath. Get a grip, I told myself. You’re being daft. I shook the childish thoughts from my head and walked straight into the room.
But not before turning on the lights.
I stopped almost immediately.
“What the…?” Lying in the middle of the room was a sheet of tarpaulin.
CRASH! I must have jumped about a foot in the air. The door had slammed shut behind me. I stood there staring at it, my heart hammering all about the room.
The lights flickered.
Fuck! I suddenly jolted backwards. What the fuck was that? A wave of perspiration suffused my body. For a second I thought I had seen someone standing at the other side of the room. But obviously I had been mistaken.
The room was empty.
Flickering lights.
I flinched, a sudden presence grabbing me from behind. I zipped around. Fucking hell. Someone was definitely in the room with me. I had just seen a tall, dark figure of a man, standing by the sheet of tarpaulin in the centre of the floor. The image had only been there for a fleeting moment, but it had definitely been there.
Hadn’t it?
I looked all around, my breath quick in my chest.
Nothing; except for a sofa and a set of drawers the room was empty. But if the room was empty… then why did I feel like something evil was about to pick me up, pin me to the wall and rip my fucking heart out? I clutched my left arm. I had to get out of here. I had to get back to my children.
But I didn’t move. I was frozen with fear, the atmosphere menacingly quiet. Ice crystals formed down my spine. I could see my breath out in front of me. I shivered, wrapping my arms around my body, but it didn’t help. The room was freezing cold.
“Fucking hell!” I fell backwards, hitting the wall, slipping to the floor. The figure had appeared again out of the corner of my eye, right to the left of my face. It had only been there for a second but it had been enough for me to get a good look, and what I had seen was no man. I tried to scream, but I couldn’t, my words frozen in my throat. Dear God help me.
Without thinking another thought I threw myself at the door. I pulled at the handle. It wouldn’t budge; it was locked. Had I locked it on entering the room? I stumbled backwards, the lights flickering, threatening to go out. I spun around, shadows slithering across the walls. What the fuck was happening? I ransacked my pockets for keys, the room changing, the air thickening, growing more and more evil with every passing second.
I suddenly stopped dead, my hand glued to the handle.
Oh, God. It was right behind me. I couldn’t see it from where I was standing, but I knew it was there, its freezing cold breath searing my skin, its long, ragged nails readying to gouge out my eyes. I held my breath tight to my chest. If I even attempted to open the door it would have me. There was nothing else for it. I was going to have to turn around. It would be the last thing I ever did, and I knew that, but I had to see it… I had to see its face.
The lights flickered.
Slowly…
Carefully…
I started to turn…
And that’s when it struck.
That’s when I realised the truth.
I was never going to see my children again.
*
I opened my eyes to horrific screams. I started, but I couldn’t see a thing. It was pitch dark. Where am I? I scrambled myself into a sitting position, terrified. The screaming continued. Oh fucking hell, what’s going on? I reached up haphazardly, placing my hands around where I thought my throat to be. I squeezed them both, my heart beating hysterically; I could hardly breathe. The screaming continued. Dear God where’s that coming from? What’s going on? Fear crashed through my head like a tornado, sucking up all the breath from my lungs. I had to fight for air. I couldn’t see a thing. I turned my head, panicking. Where were the screams coming from? Were they in the same room as me? I turned my head towards the screams.
And then they stopped.
Nothing.
The screaming had stopped.
*
I sat on the edge of what felt like a bed, shivering violently. I think my body had gone into shock. The screaming had been horrendous, but thankfully had stopped. I turned my head in a bid to see if I could see any light emanating from anywhere. Nothing. The room was as black as tar.
Where was I? The air felt cold. And I could smell something. What was it? It was on the tip of my tongue. Yes, it was my uncle’s farm. It was a memory from my childhood. The smell was of rotting wood; the farm had been very old.
Was I in a cellar?
Oh fuck, the priest’s brother. He had attacked me.
I turned my head to face where I believed the screams to have come from. Was it the priest’s brother? And if so, what the hell was he doing to that poor man? At least I thought it was a man. It could have been a woman. I couldn’t tell.
I jolted as the screams rushed into the room once more.
“Oh, fucking hell. I need to get out of here.”
I quickly got to my feet, my body bent double, my hands stretched out blindly in front of me. I started to walk with tiny stuttered shuffles. I kicked something, stumbling slightly. Oh dear God, the screams. I shuffled forward a little more but came to an abrupt halt; something had grabbed my leg. “Fucking hell!” I screamed, my leg jolting backwards. What the fuck? I stopped in my tracks, my heart racing at a hundred miles an hour. I was breathing uncontrollably with fear. I started to make blind sweeping motions with my arms to see if anything was at my feet. I struck something almost immediately. I moved my hand back to where I thought the obstacle to be. What was it? Was it a chain?
I followed the shackle back to my ankle. It was indeed a chain.
A fear rushed in to strangle me once more, the screams ripping through my ears. It was pitch dark. I didn’t know where I was. I had to get back to the bed, back to safety. On finding it I collapsed, flinging my head to the side. The world was closing in on me. I pulled my legs up to my chest and started to rock. And just like in my dreams, the tears began to flow.
*
I awoke to nothing. The air was damp, black and cold. I lay there like the dead, afraid to move a muscle. I could almost see the silence before me. It was a strange sort of silence, like nothing I had ever experienced. How can I describe this? There was nothing. Now, I know you’re probably shaking your head at this statement, but it was like a void, like a vacuum? Perhaps this is what space felt like, or damn near close to it. All the vibrating atoms in the world had grown still, no more warmth, zero degrees Kelvin.
I shivered violently. I was freezing.
A memory drifted into min
d. It was of the last time I had visited my uncle’s farm. I was standing quietly outside, just before getting into my car to drive away. We were in the middle of nowhere, and I mean nowhere. His farm was in Cumbria, far out on the moors. To get to it you had to travel down a beaten up track for about three miles. You could travel no faster than five miles an hour due to the potholes. My mum used to joke that he let it get that way deliberately because he didn’t like people.
As I stood outside my uncle’s farm, saying my goodbyes, I stopped to listen. I knew this might be the last time I ever saw the farm, a place that I had been coming to for my holidays all my life. The silence was breathtaking. In the cities, or even in small towns, there’s always something in the background, like a constant low hum, but not here. Here there was nothing.
And that’s what it sounded like, only more so.
Perhaps the silence had been magnified by the darkness.
Perhaps I was dead.
*
I had no idea how many times I had fallen asleep and woken up again. I had no idea how long I had slept each time. It could have been hours, or even days. At one point I had told myself with utter conviction that I’d had enough of this and had started screaming and thrashing around, but all I had succeeded in doing was falling pathetically into what felt like tins of some sort. I had even failed on my manic sojourns to find any walls, but I definitely found the ground and it felt like hard floorboards.
“Is anyone there?” I shouted, not caring about the priest’s brother anymore.
Nothing.
“Is anyone there? Anyone? Help me! Please someone help me!”
The earlier screams had vanished into darkness, but the fear of them had remained like an indelible stain. Why had he attacked me? Was he going to kill me? It sounded like he had killed someone else in the next room, and I was probably next. Why else would he attack me like that and lock me up in here? He was going to kill me.
My mind turned to my children, making me feel sick. Would they be OK growing up without a dad? I was insured. The house would be paid off if I died, I think. Would that be enough for Karen and them to live on? She would probably have to sell the house and downsize, but they’d be OK. I cringed in the darkness at the thought of what their accents were going to be like – Aussie Glaswegians. I was the one who was going to teach them how to speak properly. That wasn’t going to happen now.
I suddenly leapt from the bed, flailing, my arms wildly smacking my face and head. “Fuck! Fuck! Fucking hell!” Something had crawled over my face. “Let me out of here! Fucking let me out!”
I reluctantly sat back down, sobbing once more.
“Please dad, help me. Are you there dad? If there was ever a time I needed you it was now. Please.”
Hello bonny lad.
“Is that you dad?”
Yes.
“I don’t know what’s going on, dad. The last thing I remember is the priest’s brother attacking me. Wherever I am, I think it’s down to him. I don’t know how long I’ve been here. I think he’s going to kill me.”
I think you’re right, son.
“What?”
I think he’s going to cut you up into little pieces.
I stopped to think. Was the voice actually my dad’s? It sounded like his, but he had never been nasty to me before, at least not when he was well. Perhaps he had decided to get back at me for all the bad things I had done to him in life, like putting him in a home. If he were ill up there then I wouldn’t put it past him.
I could still remember how we had traipsed around Dumfries for an entire weekend, visiting prospective homes, whilst my dad lay in his hospital bed recovering from his latest urinary infection. He would only have one more before the end.
I didn’t have the car at the time so my mum’s friend Helga drove us around. Helga was a big, powerful German who came over to Scotland after the war. She was my mum’s best friend, but my sister said she was a bad influence on her, that she had changed her.
I can remember sitting in the back of the car. Helga had done the same thing to her husband a couple of years previous, but he was long dead. He too had been mentally ill, but with a very different condition. They had finally put her husband in the hospital permanently after he had tried to kill her with a kitchen knife. He told the police she was evil, that that was why he had to kill her. He told them she was a werewolf. Dad was a different case altogether. For one, he had never been violent towards any of his family.
Helga was trying to convince my mum that she was doing the right thing, that it was the best thing she had ever done. This angered me, because it was the hardest thing we had ever done, and we still weren’t sure if we were going to do it. Helga had never liked my dad, and probably saw it as a way of getting my mum to herself. She persisted with her inane babble:
“They’re all the same in the end,” she said in her thick German brogue. “It’s best you do this before he ends up doing something you’ll both regret. They’re a violent lot.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Your mum will be better off without him,” she said, callous and cold.
“Let’s get one thing straight, Helga. My dad isn’t your husband. My dad is not a violent man. There’s the difference between your situation and ours. This is hard, Helga.” And it was. We loved this man with all our hearts.
Helga didn’t say another word.
I pulled my legs up to my chest. I was freezing. I hadn’t been able to find any covers on my blind journeys into the void. At one point finding covers had been my soul objective. I must have spent an hour feeling around the perimeter of the bed to see if I could find anything, but to no avail.
My thoughts stopped dead in their tracks. I had remembered something.
“Dad?”
Yes?
“Why did the doctor want to talk to me?”
Silence.
“The last time a doctor wanted to talk to me was to ask me if it would be OK to stop your dialysis, to tell me that it was time to let you go. Why does mum’s doctor want to talk to me?”
I suddenly felt lonely. I missed my dad so much. I missed my children; Michael actually looked like him. I ran my eyes over the room to see if I could see any orbs or celestial disturbances, anything to indicate to me that he was here with me now.
Nothing.
“Where did you go, Dad? Where did you go?”
Chapter 15
The Welcome Meeting
I must have pissed for two minutes straight. I had held it in for what felt like hours, but I couldn’t hold it in any longer. My bowels were in agony. Unluckily for me I had drunk a can of Irn Bru in the car, and I was now paying the price for it. I wobbled to and fro in the dark, my balance thrown to the wind.
On making my way back to the bed I had tripped over something and collapsed flat on my back. By some utter fluke I had managed to land on the bed. I straightened myself up, placing my hand on my stomach. My entire digestion system was on fire. I attempted to find the burning ember just below the ribs, the heart of my intestinal problems. I pulled my legs up to my chest in a bid to shift the pain, but it didn’t help. My stomach rumbled away like an angry volcano.
I turned my head to the side. I had just caught a whiff of the urine.
“Please God, help me,” I said, the tears brimming over. “Please let me see my children again. I’m sorry for ignoring them. I promise if you get me out of this I’ll never ignore them again. Please, God. Please help me.”
I wiped my eyes, self-pity morphing into anger.
“Are you doing this because of the cat? Is that it? Are you punishing me because I killed a stupid cat? I don’t even remember doing it. That’s the fucking joke. I don’t remember doing it.”
I paused. Perhaps I could get God to change his mind here and let me go.
“You do know the only people being punished here are my children. They’re the ones who are going to grow up without a dad. They’re the one who’re going to suffer. Do you hear
me? You’re only punishing Michael and Depp.”
I waited for a telepathic reply but none came. I didn’t even hear my dad this time, just a dark three-dimensional silence.
My stomach rumbled violently.
“This isn’t fair.” I was lying in utter darkness, parched and starving, and to top it all off I was burning up from the inside out. “Let me fucking out of here!” I screamed. I elbowed the bed in an attempt to do the unjust world some well deserved damage, but all I achieved in doing was whacking my funny bone. “Fuck,” I yelled, a shock of vibrating static rushing up my arm. “This isn’t fair.”
*
It was a thin white horizontal line about the length of a pencil. What was a pencil doing suspended in the middle of nothing? I sat up and moved my head to the side. The pencil began to grow, to lengthen slightly.
Was I dreaming?
I gingerly swivelled my body around in a bid to get a better look at it. I rubbed my eyes. Was it a light?
I moved my attention back to my ankle – it felt sore. I reached down to shift the chain away from the tender joint. I stopped, confused. I tried again, this time moving both my hands up and down and all around my legs. It wasn’t there. The chain was gone.
Had there ever been a chain?
I returned my confused gaze to the white line. My eyes were becoming a little more accustomed to it. It was thin, almost horizontal, perhaps emanating from a door. I shuddered. I could still remember the blood curdling screams from earlier. Or was that just a dream? No, they had been real, and if I wasn’t very much mistaken, they had come from the general direction of that white line.
I licked my lips. They felt parched. I needed to find something to drink soon. How many days had I gone without water? I had heard tell that you couldn’t last more than a week without water, so no more than a week could have passed. My stomach was in agony, continually pumping acid into an empty hole.
