The Vanishment

by Jonathan Aycliffe

  The day passed, marked invisibly by these points of possible connection between Sarah and myself. There was a long gap between the 3:00 arrival and the next, at 7:43. I had started to grieve inwardly by now, though I kept telling myself it was much too early for that. All the same, I knew her strength of spirit, her ability to make a decision when she had to, her tenacity in sticking to it once it had been reached. If she had left me this time, bringing her back would not prove easy; I knew that with the dull, aching certainty of the newly bereaved. But I had seen no corpse, no farewell letter, no concrete indication that she intended to leave me.

  From time to time I tried to write, but the thing was not on me, not that day, not for some time after. My thoughts were constantly torn apart by speculation about Sarah, above all the vexed question of whether she had decided to walk out on me or not. She had done it twice before, but only for short periods, and each time she had left a note saying where she was going.

  I did not go down to Tredannack that evening, to the pub. There was the possibility that the phone might ring while I was absent. I listened to the radio for a while, a program about Russian icons. An old man spoke in a measured voice of tempera and gesso, of levkas and gold. Images of saints with stern faces and gilded halos fell like so many drops of water on my numbed brain. The telephone did not ring. I tried it out once, just to make sure it was working. The engineers assured me that it was in perfect order, and rang me back to prove it.

  There were people in London I thought of phoning, friends who might know if she was back. I rang our flat there several times, but the reply was from the answering machine. On two occasions I left a brief message, asking Sarah to ring me if she did arrive home. I realized that she had left her handbag behind. Unless she had taken cash, she would not have had enough money to get to London.

  It grew dark sometime after nine o'clock. A curious darkness, not summerlike, but harsher, denser, more complete. It had grown warmer throughout the day, but now, with the sun down again, the warmth in the air vanished rapidly, and I was forced to put the heating on again, checking first that I had fed the meter. Outside, the sea grew in volume, as though a wind were rising. There had been no forecast of storms.

  It was around midnight when I heard a door slam upstairs. One of the bedroom doors. I was in the living room. The radio had been switched off, and I was trying to concentrate on Nabokov's Pale Fire. The sound caught me completely by surprise, making me jump. Sarah must have come in quietly, I thought, and gone straight up to our room, thinking, perhaps, that I was already there.

  I waited for what must have been about five minutes, but there was no further sound upstairs. In all likelihood, Sarah was still angry with me.

  I went out. The passage and staircase were in pitch darkness. I switched on lights and stood for a moment at the foot of the stairs, gazing upward as though not quite certain what I should find up there. It was cold in the passage, not a summer's night at all.

  I climbed the stairs slowly. Something—instinct, an imperfect apprehension, guilt; I cannot be sure— something held me back from calling out.

  I reached our bedroom door in silence. It was wide open, as I had left it, and the room itself was in darkness.

  'Sarah? Are you there, love?" I said, switching on the light.

  But there was no one.

  I looked in each of the other rooms on that floor, but she was not in any of them. I had begun to feel afraid again. Begun to fear that it had not after all been Sarah, that I was still alone in the house, but that someone—or something—else had returned there. Someone or something that had never been away.

  I climbed the steep stairs to the next floor. Three rooms, and the door to one of them wide open. It had not been open when I had been up there last. I started to say Sarah's name, but the word dried in my throat. I moved toward the room.

  At that moment the door slammed hard. The sound and movement made me jump. For over a minute, I stood petrified, unable to speak or move. There was no other sound. The house was desperately quiet, as though it was waiting for something. I told myself that a draft had slammed the door, that a window must have been left open, that the rising wind had been to blame, that and nothing else.

  Resisting the temptation to turn and hurry back downstairs, I stepped through the doorway and switched on the light.

  An empty room. No furniture, not even a chair. It had been a bedroom once, it was large enough, and there was an old fireplace to one side, its grate blocked up. A large patch of damp sat on the wall opposite. I noticed right away that the window was firmly closed. Then I caught sight of something lying on the floor.

  It was Sarah's straw hat, or what was left of it. Someone—or something—had ripped it to shreds, leaving it recognizable only by the band that still hung to the tatters of the broken crown. I stood staring rigidly at it, not understanding.

  It was as I stared that I began to comprehend exactly where I was. There was a room, Sarah had said, a particular room in which the horror of the house was concentrated. I do not know how I knew— not at that moment, not then. But I did know, I knew with absolute certainty that the room I stood in was the room she had meant.

  Chapter 6

  I passed that night in very little comfort. I told myself that I had seen nothing preternatural, heard only what I had taken, perhaps wrongly, to be footsteps or the slamming of a door, imagined a voice uttering a name that had no meaning for me. Yet I could not rest entirely easy. I was assailed by uncomfortable thoughts.

  Around midnight, I rang the London friends I had been meaning to ring earlier. Tim and Susan always went to bed late, I knew they would not mind. Susan came to the phone.

  "Susie? This is Peter."

  "Peter? What the hell are you ringing at this time for?"

  "It's only midnight, Susie. Or it is down here in Cornwall."

  "Well, it isn't in bloody London. It's after three in the morning here. You've probably woken Rachel. I'll never get her back to sleep."

  Rachel was their daughter, a child of four.

  I looked at my watch. Susie was right. What had made me think it was only midnight?

  "Susie, I’m dreadfully sorry. I was sure it was only twelve. One of the clocks must have stopped or something."

  "Are you all right, Peter? You don't sound yourself."

  I hesitated. Susan often jumped to conclusions. She was a journalist, a professional maker of snap judgments.

  "It's Sarah," I said finally. "I think she's gone back to London. Have you got her there?"

  Silence for what seemed like minutes.

  "Have you two quarreled again?" There was a resigned quality to her voice. "I thought you were getting it together, Peter. I thought all that was over."

  "We were, we are. It's just. . . Listen, Susan, it's difficult to explain. Something frightened her, something stupid. A woman in the local pub . . . The thing is, I think she took a sudden decision to leave. I haven't heard from her since last night, but. . ."

  "Well, she isn't here."

  I could tell from the tone in Susan's voice that I was being blamed. If this had been some years earlier, she might have been right. I had been to blame once. But not this time.

  "Have you heard from her?"

  "No. I’ve been in all day, I would have been here if she'd rung. Have you tried ringing your own number?"

  "Of course I have," I said. "I can't get anything but the answering machine. You couldn't . . ." I paused. "You couldn't pop round in the morning, could you? See if she's all right, needs anything."

  "I can't, Peter. I've got a meeting all morning."

  "Well, what about Tim? Could he go over, do you think?"

  I sensed reluctance. They had been involved so many times in our messy lives, in our fallings-out and makings-up. I think they had looked forward to our holiday as much as we had done. And yet they were our closest, dearest friends. That had to count for something.

  "I don't know, Peter. He's gone back to sleep. I'll ask hi
m in the morning. But I know he's busy with his Lithuania project, he could be tied up all day. Why don't you get Sarah's mother to call?"

  "I don't want her involved. You should know better than to suggest it. You know what she's like."

  "Well, all right. I'll ask Tim."

  "We haven't quarreled, Susan. Truly we haven't."

  "Tell me about it tomorrow, Peter. I'll be back around one. And get your bloody clock fixed."

  That night I dreamed a very strange dream. I dreamed I was in the hallway, looking up the stairs. For some reason, I was afraid. There was something at the top of the stairs, something I did not want to see or meet. And the upper half of the staircase was in darkness. In spite of my fear, I felt myself being drawn, step by reluctant step, along the hall to the foot of the stairs. I looked up into the darkness, struggling to tear myself away, but the force that drew me upward was more powerful than my fear. I started climbing the stairs. As my foot touched the first step I woke to the sound of my own voice, barking like a dog's.

  I rang Susan at five past one. She reminded me that I had not given her the address for Petherick House or my phone number. When I had dictated them, I asked if there was any news.

  "Tim went over this morning, Peter. He got no answer to the bell, so he let himself in. There was no sign that Sarah had been back. I tried ringing half an hour ago, but it's still the answering machine. Can you think of anywhere else she might go? Pat's, maybe?"

  "Her sister, Lorna," I suggested lamely.

  "Well, why don't you try her and anybody else you can think of? If you draw a blank, ring back and we'll talk it over. Tim's due back around half past five. I'll ring before that if I hear anything at all."

  "I'm frightened, Susan," I said weakly.

  "There's no need to be. She'll turn up. You'll see."

  But that wasn't what I had meant.

  By half past five I was profoundly worried. Lorna had heard nothing and was frostier than ever. I rang Sarah’s mother and father in Huddersfield; they said she hadn't been in touch. Her father quizzed me about what he called "your latest separation." I hadn't the strength to argue with him. When I hung up, my hand was trembling as usual. After that, I tried a couple of her old flatmates, some colleagues from work, even a couple in a converted vicarage in Northumberland with whom she often spent painting weekends. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I was growing scared.

  I rang London again around eight o'clock. This time Tim came to the phone.

  "Peter," he said, "why aren't you being straight with me? Something must have made her leave."

  “We were getting along fine," I answered. "It's just that. . ." I told him what I could.

  "That doesn't sound like Sarah," was all he said.

  "None of this is like Sarah," I retorted.

  "I think you should go to the police."

  "What, and have them poking their noses into everything? They'd get nowhere."

  "You're getting nowhere yourself. And unlike you, they know the district. You should have gone to them before this. How long has it been?"

  "Nearly forty-eight hours."

  "Jesus, Peter—that's far too long. Get in touch with them tonight. Drive over."

  "I can't. I can't leave the house. In case she comes back."

  "Well, ring them then."

  I didn't, not right away, not that night. That night something happened—something that unsettled me for a long time afterward. I had spent the evening trying to write, but it had been useless. My mind was not on the story but on Sarah. I kept listening, half expecting to hear her feet outside the door, or her voice calling from the kitchen. Intermittently I would look up, as though the telephone was about to ring, thinking she had at last decided to call a halt and make her reappearance. But there was nothing all evening.

  The devil of it was that I loved her very much. We had been married thirteen years. I had come close to destroying our life together, I know, and Sarah had taken a long time to forgive me. Nonetheless, I loved her, and her absence distressed me terribly. I could not bear the thought of separation, of real, lasting separation, of never seeing her again. And that other, darker thought, the possibility that something unpleasant had happened to her, that filled me with dread.

  Around midnight, depressed by my fruitless vigil, I trudged upstairs. I was in no mood for sleep, yet the thought of spending the rest of the night downstairs was loathsome. At the entrance to our bedroom, I hesitated. The thought had caught me unawares, that I should look at the paintings Sarah had completed, the ones she had stored on the top floor. She had been working that day, the day she had disappeared; irrationally, I thought I might find some sort of clue in the painting she had last completed.

  In spite of my newfound curiosity, I was strangely reluctant to go farther up the stairs. My dream had affected me. There was a melancholy feel to the entire upper story of the house, and I still felt a little spooked by the bedroom I had been in, the one in which I had sensed that atmosphere of subdued yet growing menace. I went up all the same. I knew that if I let my fears get the better of me, I would soon end up like Sarah, frightened out of my wits and forced to leave. I had no intentions of leaving, not until my two months were up.

  The room in which the finished paintings had been left was at the end of a short corridor, just beyond the bedroom, now locked and silent. I switched on the light and looked around. No furniture, just a large rectangle covered in a white sheet, propped against one wall.

  There was a portfolio under the sheet. I laid it flat on the bare floor and untied the ribbons one by one. Carefully, I opened it. Inside was a stack of heavy papers, each sheet laid neatly on the one below.

  I had expected paintings of the house and gardens, or of the coastal views visible from the cliff top. But the painting on top was not a landscape at all. It was a portrait of a woman sitting in a room. With a shudder, I thought I recognized the room—it was the one farther down the corridor, the one that Sarah had considered the heart of whatever ailed this house.

  The woman in the painting sat tensely on a high-backed chair, her body upright, I would almost have said stiff. She wore a long black dress with buttons that went from a high neck to her ankles, and her hair was lifted and arranged in a tight bun on top. Her age I guessed to be somewhere between eighty and ninety. Sarah had painted her face well, and in considerable detail. One side of the face was completely in shadow. On it was a look I could not quite interpret. Unease, perhaps, or the memory of something unpleasant. Or the first stirrings of dread.

  I lifted the painting and set it to one side. Beneath it was a second, almost identical. The same room, the same time of day, the same woman on the chair. What on earth had been going through Sarah's mind all the time she had been out there in the garden, painting? I drew the second picture aside as well. The one beneath was the same.

  No, not quite. It was at the third painting that I noticed a tiny but marked difference between the three pictures I had seen so far. On the wall behind the sitter was the damp patch I had noticed in the room. In each of the pictures, the shape of the patch changed slightly, and it seemed to be growing in several directions.

  Quickly, I leafed through the remaining pictures. There were nine in all. They all showed the same scene. In the last, the damp patch had grown until it covered most of the wall. And I could see, when I looked more closely, that the wallpaper was about to give in one place. I bent down and brought the light right up to the picture. As I did so I shuddered. In the painting, against the wallpaper, pressing hard as though about to burst through, was the unmistakable shape of a child's hand.

  Chapter 7

  I rang the police early the next morning. The night I passed was difficult. There were bad dreams. Or, rather, the same dream as before. And when I woke, bad thoughts. There were noises somewhere in the house, but I did not investigate them. I knew Sarah had not made them, and I did not want to know who had.

  The policeman who took my call suggested that I ought to call at the s
tation in order to file a missing-person report. After checking with Tim and Susan that Sarah had still not turned up in London, I drove to St. Ives. The main police station was in Will's Lane, next to Trewyn Gardens. A desk sergeant showed me to a side room. About ten minutes later a young policewoman came to take details of Sarah's disappearance. I had brought a photograph, one of the shots we had taken at St. Just's church. It had been developed at the pharmacy in Tredannack. They noted it and filed it away, together with a detailed description and an account of my efforts until then.

  "It's well over forty-eight hours," the policewoman said. Her voice was neutral, there was no hint of accusation in it that I can remember. That was what I feared, of course: accusation, the leveling of guilt, the implication that I had done something to Sarah and that my innocence was mere posturing.

  At this time of year my limbs ache. I am sometimes afraid without reason of small things, of shadows, of movements spied from the eye's corner.

  'I'm sorry?" I said.

  "Why did you take so long before notifying us?"

  "It's not so long," I said. "I had every reason to think she'd turn up by now. Why not? She's not a child. It isn't as if she was in obvious danger."

  "But you say she took no money, no spare clothes. By the next day that must have been a great inconvenience for her."

  "I don't know. She may have had money. She has her own bank account. I don't know how much she had in her handbag to start with."

  "I think she'd have taken the bag. Most women would. Did she have credit cards?"

  I nodded.

  "And are they still in the bag?"

  "Yes."

  "All of them?"

  "Yes, I think so. I'd have to check. There's Visa, Access, one or two shop cards."

  "Normally we wouldn't investigate an adult disappearance at this stage," she said slowly, watching me, as though expecting some reaction. "People often walk out on their spouses. If your wife wants to be on her own, that's her business. You do understand that, don't you?"