Beneath the Boards

by David Haynes

  Stokes was frustrated. “And that’s it? You’re going to leave it there?” He tried not to sound pissed off but he was. When people only gave him half a story, or in this case, a suggestion there might be a story, it usually made him more determined to get them to talk. He pulled the car to a stop.

  “I’m sure you’ll find out for yourself. Someone with more knowledge on the matter will be happy to tell you.” Willis opened the door. “Thanks for the lift.”

  He watched Willis pull his collars up against the rain and hunch his shoulders over. He didn’t need to know anything more about the cottage, especially from a man like Willis. He pulled away and drove the short distance back. It had been a brief encounter with Willis and had done nothing to change his opinion of the man. He was dour and more than a little odd.

  Stokes unpacked the supplies and plugged in one of the lamps, which threw out an orange glow. It was a dismal day, even though it was not yet noon. The other one would go in the bedroom when the bed arrived.

  He walked over to the patio doors and knelt down. The pattern was terrible and confusing but finding the errant dark spot wasn’t difficult. He ran his finger over it. What was he expecting? The warmth of freshly spilled blood or just the crusty spike of an ageing stain? He got neither. The stain seemed to be embedded deep into the fibres of the carpet. It was almost as if it was consuming the blood.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Stokes,” he muttered.

  He’d been back to Scarsdale after the stabbing, not immediately but a safe time later. It had been a time when he thought he might still have a chance of getting through it. If only he could shake off the terrible and constant headaches he might be back at work within a month, two at the most.

  The crime scene investigators had cut a hole in the carpet by then and removed any trace of where his body had been found. They had all but eradicated any sign of where his beautiful and pure blood had soaked into filthy carpet, creating just another stain. He’d knelt and run his fingers over the bare floorboards. There was nothing, not even a single droplet of blood had seeped through into the wood. Had he ever been there at all? A smeared hand-print on the pockmarked wall told the story, or part of it. It had been made by a small hand, a woman’s hand, smeared in blood. He’d traced his fingers over the outline. The blood had aged badly and turned brown like a cheap, bottom-shelf bottle of red.

  He pushed his finger deeper into the pile of the carpet and felt the hard wood of the boards below.

  “Shit!” he shouted and withdrew his finger. A pinprick of blood gathered in a ball on his fingertip. He put it in his mouth and sucked it. It was probably just a splinter poking up from the floorboards. He stood up and looked down at the little patch. When he put the belt sander to work there wouldn’t be any carpet there, let alone splinters.

  4

  Stokes tightened the final bolt on the bed and stepped back. Okay, so it was just a bed but he was pleased with it, nearly as pleased as he was with the new partially fitted bathroom suite. They were purely functional items and although he’d quite enjoyed sleeping on the recliner, it was no long-term replacement. His aching back was testament to that. There hadn’t been any further flashbacks in the last week. His mind had been too engaged with the vagaries of plumbing to wander into much darker territories.

  He stripped the plastic cover from the mattress and heaved it onto the bed. He’d never been addicted to soap operas like the former Mrs S, but he’d still spent a lot of evenings staring inanely into the box. How much time had he wasted doing that? He jumped onto the bed and lay back. It was amazing how much he’d accomplished without the distractions of modern life, without the morbid reminders his brain conjured up.

  He looked up at the ceiling. The cottage was old, you just had to look at the thickness of the walls to see that. It had probably gone through countless changes through the decades. Everyone who had lived there had stamped their own signature on it somewhere. There was probably a little piece of each and every former resident in the very fabric of the building.

  Apart from fleeting and brief conversations with the delivery drivers, he hadn’t seen a soul all week. This was something he’d expected but not totally prepared himself for. It was one thing desiring solitude but another entirely immersing himself in it.

  He rolled off the bed and looked out of the Velux window. It was late afternoon and soon lights from across the lake would stab holes in the darkness and drip fire over the water. Would he ever find another partner? Did he want to? His last partnership could hardly be described as a raging success. Four years of marriage and an acrimonious departure for both of them was apt to put anyone off, especially when she worked in the same station. She hadn’t come to the hospital to visit him, not that he’d wanted or expected her to, but she had signed the card. Her signature was right in the corner, almost as if it was trying to crawl away and hide somewhere. It was understandable, of course it was, but Melanie was just about the only person who knew what being stabbed would actually do to him.

  He turned away and walked back downstairs. It didn’t matter anymore, none if it did because he had a new life now.

  “Yoo-hoo!” There was no mistaking Ina’s friendly voice.

  He walked over to the patio doors and smiled. “Hello there.” He opened the doors and saw the cake tin in her hands.

  “I hope that’s not for me.” He patted his stomach. “I won’t fit into my trousers at this rate.”

  “Nonsense! You need fattening up. I’ve come to see if you’re coming to the gathering again tonight?”

  Had it really been a week since the last one? He hadn’t even thought about it. Ina stared at him, exerting a pressure to answer. Would it be so bad? A couple of beers with the folks wasn’t such a bad idea. Besides the trip to town, he hadn’t been out all week.

  “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  The ever-present smile on Ina’s face widened a touch. Stokes stepped to the side. “Would you like to come in?” From her reaction last time, he knew she was keen to get in and have a look around.

  Her eyes widened for a moment before a frown of confusion spread across her face. “I don’t want to be a nuisance.”

  “You’re not.” Stokes was puzzled by her reaction. Last week she had practically tried to climb over him to get inside.

  “Well, if you’re sure.” She raised her leg to come over the threshold.

  A light thump followed by the sound of smashing glass came from upstairs. Stokes turned and looked.

  “It sounds like you might have a job to do. I’ll come back another day, see you later.”

  Ina had gone before he had the chance to turn back around. He closed the door and went upstairs. The sound had come from the bedroom but he was sure there wasn’t any glass in there, apart from the Velux and it didn’t sound like a window had been smashed.

  At the top of the stairs, he glanced into the bathroom before going into the bedroom. He saw it immediately. The lamp he’d put on the floor beside the bed was lying on its side and glass was scattered around it.

  How had the bulb smashed? The shade should stop that happening. He knelt beside it, carefully avoiding the broken glass. One side of the conical shade was crumpled, no that wasn’t quite right, it was almost destroyed entirely. Whatever integrity its frame possessed had been removed.

  Stokes felt his heart rate quicken. He hadn’t left the lamp here, he hadn’t left the lamp on the side of the room without a plug socket. Why would he? He pushed the lamp and it wobbled across the glass and into the wall.

  The broken glass didn’t appear to be in a random pattern. It looked almost... What? It looked ordered. He climbed onto the bed and looked down.

  “No?” he whispered.

  He was right about the glass, it was ordered all right. It spelled out a word.

  “No,” he repeated through a mouth that no longer felt like his own.

  *

  “Great to see you again, Jim.” Peter gave him one of his none-too-gentle p
ats on the back. Despite the number of cakes he must eat, he was in good shape. “Have you recovered?”

  “Recovered?”

  “Yes, from your fall. You looked quite shaken up.”

  Stokes had forgotten about Peter’s presence in the aftermath. The lead up, however, remained fresh in his memory.

  “Fine thanks.” He shook Peter’s hand. “As I said, that beer of yours is pokey.”

  Peter laughed and whispered conspiratorially, “I’ve got some wheat beer that’ll knock your socks off, fancy some? You should come over for...” He stopped and looked around the room.

  “There she is. Ina, I was just saying to Jim that he should come over for dinner.”

  Ina rushed over with the trademark smile painted across her ruby-red lips. “What a lovely idea. Friday evening, say seven? We’re the last house out of the village, big green door, you can’t miss us.”

  Stokes felt like he’d been run over. “Are you sure? All I seem to be doing is eating your food and drinking your beer.”

  “Don’t be silly. Besides, as you can see, Ina loves cooking.”

  Stokes looked about the room nodding at people whose faces he remembered but names he didn’t.

  “Is Edward Willis here tonight?” he asked.

  Ina scuttled off barking an order at one of the others.

  “No. He’s a grumpy old bugger, no great loss if you ask me.” It was the first time Stokes had heard anything but conviviality in Peter’s voice.

  “I gave him a lift the other day. He wasn’t exactly full of the joys of spring then.”

  “Oh? Where was he?”

  “On the road back to Stormark. I saw him as I was coming back from town. It was the same day you found me.” A vision of Natalie holding a bloody knife flashed through his mind.

  “Yes, our vicar is notoriously surly, but I believe he has a happier side in there somewhere.”

  “He’s the vicar?” Stokes asked. Willis wasn’t an archetypal vicar, at least as far as temperament was concerned.

  “Well, he used to be, somewhere down south I think. He’s retired now of course and we don’t have a chapel in Stormark. I’m not sure there’s ever been one.” Peter looked about the room and waved to someone. “Right, off to circulate.”

  Stokes stood alone feeling slightly awkward. The incident with the light bulb was still playing out in his mind. He’d swept up the glass and tipped it in the bin but he could still see the word splashed in tiny jewel-like fragments across the floorboards.

  Even now he wasn’t sure he’d actually seen it. Was it quite as clear as he remembered? Or was it something his damaged mind had conjured up? He walked to the table and took a bottle of beer. He’d probably left it on the bed and it had simply rolled off, nothing more than that. He took a long draft of the beer and suppressed a belch. The question was, how many of these incidents could he pass off as mischievous tricks played by his mind before he conceded that the doctor might know what he was talking about after all? He took another long drink. He wouldn’t go on the tablets again, no way. The cottage was all he needed now and a few weeks of peace would clear his head, he knew it.

  He turned and was greeted by an elderly man. “So you were a police officer, Mr Stokes?”

  His heart sank. Even when he was a serving officer he preferred to keep it to himself. Requests for advice and the inevitable ‘off the record’ scenarios made him wary.

  “Used to be, yes. Sorry, I’ve met so many new people recently, I don’t recall your name.”

  “That’s all right, it’s Jack, Jack Hughes. I always wanted to be a copper, bit too long in the tooth now though. Now then I’ve got a question for you...”

  *

  Stokes climbed under the crisp white covers and let out a long drawn-out sigh. It felt good to be in bed. He stretched and pushed his toes against the cool wooden footboard. It made the bed groan in with pleasure.

  He could look directly out of the Velux window from this position and see the stars up above. The moon wasn’t visible through his little static viewfinder but a silvery glow indicated its presence in the night sky.

  The aftermath of being stabbed had left him unable to sleep, and then eventually when he had slept, it had only been in a room with a light on. That didn’t last long though, because the dark corners of his mind could conjure up Natalie whether it was light in the room or not.

  He closed his eyes. Tomorrow, all being well, he might make a start on the floor. Pulling up that damn ugly carpet was well overdue. He rolled over onto his front and tried to fill his mind with happy thoughts. He just hoped they were strong enough to keep the bad ones at bay.

  *

  He stretched his arms and pushed against the headboard. He couldn’t remember sleeping quite so well, at least not since the incident. His body ached but it was a pleasant sensation. It was the result of manual labour and his body hadn’t grown accustomed to it yet.

  Up above, through the window, he could see the sky was a stunning and cloudless azure. He yawned and inhaled deeply. He was used to the metallic smell of the lake and he noticed it less and less each day but this morning it was stronger than normal. It seemed fresher somehow.

  A sense of well-being washed over him. He was lucky, lucky to be alive and lucky to find this beautiful cottage in such an idyllic location. Despite the perversities his traumatised mind vomited up, this was definitely going to be the new start he’d hoped for.

  He closed his eyes and fell headlong into the moment. Birds settled on the roof and sang a beautiful chorus and in the distance a flock of ducks raced across the surface of the lake trying to take off. Water sprayed from their wing feathers and flew high into the air like ephemeral diamonds. His senses felt amplified. It was almost as if he was part of the ecosystem, not living beside it but within it.

  A tingling sensation started in the tips of his toes sending wiry tendrils of pleasure into his calf muscles. The sensation was almost too much to bear.

  “Stay,” a voice whispered in his ear.

  “Stay with me,” the soft and feminine voice whispered again. It tickled his ear and he suppressed a shiver.

  His eyes were open but the owner of the voice was invisible.

  Yet he could feel her. She was in the room with him and there was something about her voice that was sad, almost pathetic.

  “I’m staying,” he murmured weakly, and he meant it. He never wanted to leave this beautiful place again.

  “Stay,” her voice was like a fragrant breeze. “Stay,” she repeated again and again until he could barely stand to hear the heartbreaking melancholy in her voice.

  His body shuddered as an agonising bolt of pain overpowered the pleasure. He roared with distress and sat up. He felt breathless and a thin sweat covered his entire body.

  “A dream?” he muttered.

  He flopped back down. It might have been a dream but the pain in his side was real. He touched the scar and groaned. Dawn had started to break and the grey morning had enough strength to show the blood on his fingers. It wasn’t much but it was there and for whatever reason the scar tissue had opened up just enough to allow a little more of his blood to be spilled.

  Accompanying the pain in his body was another sensation though, a thin remnant from the dream. It was strange but he felt a tinge of grief for the owner of the voice, whoever it belonged to.

  “Some dream,” he whispered.

  *

  He made coffee and opened the double doors. He’d left the recliner in the same spot since he arrived. It was a couple of feet back from the doors and it afforded a spectacular view of Lake Stormark. He settled into it and pulled a blanket over his legs.

  He’d had powerful dreams before. Some good and some not so good but he couldn’t ever remember being left with such a strong sense of emotion.

  There had been no visual clarity, after all there hadn’t been a face to put to the voice, but all the same his senses had been stimulated. His mind was still tingling, albeit the sensation was r
eceding, and the pitch of the voice had already melted away into a recess in his mind. Even the birdsong seemed more doleful than it should. He sipped the coffee and felt the bitter brew send a shuddering buzz through his body. He had no idea how long it would all last but he was going to sit right there and let it wash over him. He’d try to reason it out later, if it needed to be reasoned out at all.

  He’d been looking out across the lake while he was considering the dream, allowing his vision to focus on everything and yet nothing at the same time. It was utterly relaxing. But now, as his musing came to a close, he focused on the foreshore. What was that? He got to his feet and leaned forward.