“Yes, well it’s too late for that,” Diana said. “We’ll have to do what we can and hope Suzie decides to come back soon.”
“Where do you think she got this from?” I turned the sheet over. The paper had been tightly folded into three. “She never mentioned it, so she surely can’t have had it for long.”
Diana took it from me and held it closer to her eyes. “There’s no name on it but I’m wondering if someone slid it under her door during the night.”
“None of us would do such a thing,” I said.
“So that leaves Anita,” Vicky said. “She could still have a key.”
“Little mouse, ‘I’m going to be a nun one day’ Anita?” Diana laughed. “Do me a favor. You saw how she reacted when she guessed what we’d been up to. She wouldn’t have any truck with this sort of thing.”
“It’s always the quiet ones,” I said. “But you’re right. I don’t see her doing something like this. Not her style. Besides, she’s gone. Couldn’t get out of this house fast enough, so why would she return, merely to play a tasteless practical joke?”
“I think we should destroy it,” Vicky said. “Burn it, just to be sure.”
“It’s not ours to do anything with,” I said. “How about if I look after it for her? When she gets back—assuming she does—she can decide what she wants to do with it.”
“As long as you don’t mind having it in your room, Alice,” Diana said. “I don’t think I’d want it in mine.”
“Me neither.” Vicky shuddered.
Suddenly I wished I hadn’t volunteered, but I couldn’t go back on my words. I folded the paper into its original creases and tucked it in my dressing gown pocket.
I couldn’t concentrate all day—a fact that my boss didn’t appreciate. Three times, he pulled me up about some inaccuracy in my paperwork. Each time, he seemed more irritated than the previous occasion. I couldn’t really blame him. My errors were pathetic.
Back home that evening, the remaining three of us in the house congregated in the kitchen.
“Mr. Copeland was here when I got home,” Vicky said. The landlord. “I asked him about Anita and Suzie. He said Anita had been in touch, but he hadn’t heard a word from Suzie and she had fallen two months in arrears with her rent. He’d called around to collect it, let himself in and found nothing. Well, we know that anyway. Good job we tidied up her room this morning. He was livid enough as it is. He said if she didn’t contact him by the weekend, he would bundle up her stuff and re-let her room.”
“I hadn’t any idea she was in arrears,” Diana said. “Did either of you? I’d have lent her the money myself if I’d known. Maybe that’s why she did a moonlight flit. That piece of paper may have had nothing to do with it.”
“Maybe,” I said, but in my heart I didn’t believe it for one second.
When I returned to my room, I took the piece of paper out of my dressing gown pocket, only to have it crumple in my hand like a dead leaf. I placed the tattered remains in my ashtray. A knock on my door. I opened it.
Vicky stood there. She wrinkled her nose. “What’s that? Smells like something died.”
I sniffed. A sickly, cloying aroma wafted up from the remains of the paper which gradually turned from yellow to ever-deeper shades of brown.
When I told her what it was, she became adamant. “Burn it. It’s no good to Suzie in that state anyway. Burn it and be done with it.” I nodded, and, as Vicky backed away, her hand covering her nose, I shut the door and grabbed a box of matches. The scraps of paper flamed quickly. I didn’t expect the hissing sound that followed, as if someone had poured water on them. Dark, noxious smoke wafted up from the blackened ashtray and the brief fire died out. When the ashtray had cooled, I held it at arm’s length and marched out to the garbage bin in the yard. After wrapping it in old newspaper, I dumped it in and slammed the lid on tight. I could always buy a new ashtray tomorrow.
By Saturday morning there had been no word from Suzie. Diana, Vicky, and I, armed with torches and a spare light bulb, opened the cellar door. The familiar fusty smell washed over us. Diana led the way. A flight of wooden stairs stretched before us and we carefully descended.
“There it is.” Vicky shone her torch on the naked light bulb suspended from a coiled wire. “I think I can reach it if you two will provide the light.”
We did so, and Vicky unscrewed the bulb. A couple of minutes later, she had the new bulb in place and went back up the stairs to switch it on.
Light flooded the stairs and we switched off our torches. Below us, a gloomy expanse awaited and we made our way down to it.
The concrete floor was filthy and littered with crumpled pages from old newspapers which had probably been used for packing years earlier. Sure enough, a couple of old tea chests came into view as we moved further into the room and needed our torches once again. We separated and moved around the dirty cellar. I picked up an ancient, rusty screwdriver, turned over a pile of worn and tattered sheets, and generally looked around for any sign of life—hoping and praying I didn’t come across any cockroaches or rats.
“Can you see anything that could have made that sound you heard the other night?” Diana asked.
“Nothing, thank goodness.”
“Here’s something,” Vicky said, and we made our way over to her. She held a piece of red cloth, and as my torch shone on it, I could see it was a dress. It looked familiar.
“Doesn’t Suzie have a dress like that?” I asked.
“Exactly like this,” Vicky said. “I was with her when she bought it in C & A a couple of months ago. Look, it’s got their label in it. And it’s her size. I’m prepared to swear this is her dress.”
My palms began to sweat. “Didn’t she have that on the other night?”
Diana nodded. “She did. And that was the last time any of us saw her.”
No one spoke for a few moments. Then I broke the heavy silence.
“However that dress got down here, I don’t believe Suzie brought it. She was terrified of this cellar.”
“Nevertheless,” Vicky said, brandishing the dress, “here it is. Large as life.”
“Someone else must have been in this house. Maybe Mr. Copeland…”
“Why would he bring Suzie’s dress down here?” Diana said. “Where did you find it, Vicky?”
“Here,” she pointed to a broken coffee table. “It was lying there, folded up neatly.”
“So it couldn’t have been thrown from the top of the stairs?” I asked.
“Unlikely,” Vicky replied. “It would have to have managed to fly through the air, take a turn to the left and land in a neat pile.”
“But you said Mr. Copeland was here when you got home today,” I said.
“Yes, I met him coming down the stairs. He had a face like a slapped backside.”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Diana said. “All he’s interested in is getting his rent every month. Cash. Never checks. He’s not going to bother folding up the one and only item of clothing… Hey, hang on a minute. We were in her room the day she left. Probably minutes after she’d gone. She’d taken every scrap of clothing she possessed. I’ll lay odds she probably put that dress back on again and wore it when she went.”
“What if she didn’t leave?” I said.
“You’re frightening me,” Vicky said. “Are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?”
“Well, it is odd, isn’t it?” I said, directing my torch around the room.
Diana called out, “Suzie? Are you down here?” Her call bounced off the bare walls.
“Give me warning next time you’re going to shout like that,” I said. “I nearly had kittens.”
“Sorry.”
“I don’t understand why she would come down here, take her dress off, fold it neatly and leave,” I said. “None of it makes any sense.”
“Agreed,” Diana said. “But what if it didn’t happen like that? What if someone else is involved?”
Vicky gasped. “Oh no, I
’m getting out of here.” She dropped the dress and ran back up the stairs, leaving Diana and me staring at each other. I stooped and picked up the discarded frock.
“I think,” I said, taking a deep breath, “we had better search this place. Just in case.”
I didn’t need to elaborate. Diana knew exactly what I meant, and by now I truly feared the worst because I remembered something else about the morning of Suzie’s disappearance. I had never heard the front or back door shut.
I blundered into an ancient standard lamp. It keeled over and smashed on the floor.
“Oh my God!” Diana said.
“Sorry,” I said, stepping carefully over old paint cans and sidestepping a broken chair. Before long, I had circumnavigated the room and met up with Diana back where we had begun, at the foot of the stairs.
“We can’t have missed anything,” I said, offering up a silent prayer of thanks to whatever deity happened to be listening. “She isn’t here.”
“For which we are truly grateful,” Diana said.
“Amen to that.”
Back in the kitchen, I made us a coffee. “You never actually saw her that morning, did you?” I asked.
Diana shook her head. “All I heard was that crash, and that was weird because I don’t understand how that could have happened when it did. Who knocked the furniture over? Surely I should have seen Suzie, or whomever, when I dashed out of my room. They would have had to fly through the window not to bump into me.”
“If they went out the front or back door, they must have opened and closed it very quietly because I never heard either door, and I usually do.”
“It’s all very odd. All we’ve got is that dress. I’ll hang onto it for now, if that’s okay?”
“Yes,” I said. “Good idea. Hopefully she’ll come back for it.”
“She’d better get a move on or Copeland will rent out her rooms. After all,” she rolled her eyes, “the poor man needs the money.”
I laughed, then a noise stopped me. A woman wailing.
“Is that what you heard before?” Diana asked.
“Yes. It’s coming from the cellar. I’m sure of it.”
Diana sprang forward and unlocked the cellar door.
The wailing stopped.
We waited.
Nothing.
“This is crazy,” Diana said, closing the door and locking it. We paused, in case the noise would start up again. It didn’t.
The scrape of a key in the front door broke the silence. The short, rotund figure of our landlord thumped his way along the hall in our direction.
“Well, have you heard from her?” His tone sounded accusing, as if we were hiding something from him. Until that moment, I hadn’t really formed an opinion of the man I had only met briefly once. I did now and it wasn’t favorable. I really wished I did have some information about Suzie’s whereabouts, so I could keep it from him.
“Not a word,” Diana said. “We’re getting really worried about her.”
“You’re worried!” His face took on a reddish hue. “What about my rent? I’m not made of money. I can’t afford to have rooms empty. Well, she’s had her chance. I’m letting her rooms. Either of you interested?”
“Yes,” I heard myself say. Diana shot me a horrified glance, but said nothing. I hadn’t a clue why I had said that. It felt like a voice inside my head had suddenly woken up and taken control of me for a split second. Now it had gone again.
Mr. Copeland seemed a little taken aback. I certainly was. What could I be thinking of? He, on the other hand, didn’t intend to hang around. “Right, you can move in tomorrow. I’ll have her stuff bagged up and it can go in the cellar. I’ll amend your rent book accordingly and let your existing room as soon as I can find someone suitable. Shouldn’t take long.”
The landlord apparently couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Probably afraid I’d change my mind. When he had shut the door behind him, Diana turned on me.
“How could you do that? Of all the treacherous behavior!”
“Hang on a minute, Diana. Before you go off on one, think for a second.” I improvised. “If, or when, Suzie comes back, she would have nowhere to stay because he’s going to let her flat whether I take it or not. At least this way, she would have somewhere to live because I certainly wouldn’t turn her away. My bedsit is too small for me, let alone an extra person, but I could easily fit another single bed in her room.”
Diana wavered a little. “How do you know Copeland would allow it?”
“You know what sort he is. He only cares about the money. I would be responsible for that because it will be my name on the rent book.”
Another key scraped in the front door. Vicky, carrying two bulging supermarket bags.
“Hi, you two, what’s up? Sorry I ran out on you like that, but it really got to me down there. Did you find anything else? Any trace of Suzie apart from that dress?”
“Nothing,” Diana said. “Copeland’s been here. He’s letting Suzie’s flat. To Alice.”
Vicky’s mouth formed a disbelieving ‘O’. “What?”
“Look, I’m sorry, but if Suzie comes back, she won’t be homeless.”
“She does have a point there,” Diana said. Vicky said nothing, but the frown told me she wasn’t at all convinced about my motives for this apparent betrayal. I didn’t blame her. The guilt became a shroud covering me from head to foot.
It didn’t let up the next day as I packed my stuff up and took it upstairs. Mr. Copeland had sent a minion armed with black plastic sacks. It took him no more than a few minutes to clear out her remaining possessions, which he duly dumped in the cellar. Then he left, without a word, even though we had instinctively formed ourselves into an impromptu guard of honor, heads bowed. As if Suzie had died, and we alone knew it.
It didn’t help that I was growing increasingly uneasy. The house seemed to watch my every move. Shadows sped past me—glimpsed only at the corner of my eye. I told myself I was being paranoid, but the belief that this building possessed more than mere bricks and mortar wouldn’t go away.
Diana and Vicky said little to me for the rest of the weekend and I knew the reason—they didn’t know how to deal with what I had done. There’s that well-worn phrase about jumping in someone’s grave and I wished I could find a way of explaining my actions. I knew my words about providing a sanctuary for Suzie had fallen on largely skeptical ears. I also knew it wasn’t true. Try as I might, I still couldn’t explain my actions and felt every inch the traitor Diana had accused me of being.
Moving into my new flat could have been fun if the other two had thought more of me at that point. We could have had a laugh, shared a bottle of cheap wine… Instead, I went through the solitary process of packing up my few belongings and transporting them in a series of traipses up and down the stairs.
I decided to move the bed from its current position to the opposite wall where the light would be better for reading. The divan wasn’t particularly heavy or awkward and I soon had it repositioned, leaving some debris behind that indicated it hadn’t been moved for some considerable time.
I picked up the assorted candy wrappers and a crumpled newspaper, then stopped and stared at what lay under it—a black, slim leather-bound book. I retrieved it and read the title on the cover. Shadows Behind The Veil. Poems by Eliza Montague Jordan. The pages were stiff and the volume seemed quite old. Flicking through it, the poet seemed to have had a preference for the melodramatic and occasionally the downright bizarre, with overly dramatic odes to lost loves—not all of which seemed to have been human. One in particular caught my eye. Its title? “To That Which Was Lost And Now Found”:
Your flaming eyes entrance me
Your body—as no other—confounds and amazes my senses.
I worship thee with my heart, and my soul I give to thee,
Unquestioning, divine, unholy, eternal…
I moved on. A poem called “The Darkest Veil” had a different quality. Dark. No love poetry here. It cons
isted of one verse:
Do not allow more evil to enter in this place
For it has found a home here, among the shadows of the dead
Heed my words, no devil bring, nor demon from beyond
For he already lives here and is waiting for more souls
To wait on him and serve him until His kingdom comes
At the end when all is done and those who are left may sleep,
When death’s darkest veil draws over you, then shall shadows weep.
I shivered. For some unaccountable reason, the words would stick in my mind. Especially the last line. Not that it was particularly great poetry—far from it—but there was something profoundly disturbing about its dystopian predictions. Whoever Eliza Montague Jordan had been, she appeared to have been in the grips of some kind of religious fervor.
I turned over the pages but none of the other twenty or so poems held my attention or affected me in the same way. I searched for a publisher’s imprint but the book must have been self-published, probably at some not-inconsiderable cost to the author, as the binding and print quality were so fine. I could find no date of publication either.
The book suddenly felt uncomfortable in my hand and I thrust it between two of the cheap paperbacks on my newly acquired bookshelf.
Outside, evening was drawing in and the wind howled. I finished my unpacking, made myself a cup of coffee in my new kitchen, and sat down in front of the television. All around me, the house gave little creaks as the gale pounded at the roof and rattled the window.
I switched on the electric fire and settled down to watch a play, but couldn’t concentrate. My attention kept wandering back to that book and that single verse kept replaying in my mind, as if it were on a continuous loop.
Suzie had never struck me as the sort to go in for poetry of any kind—least of all the sentimental or religious type. Far more likely, a previous occupant had mislaid it when they moved out.
The Darkest Veil Page 4
