Prey

by Graham Masterton

  “Two deaths in two days,” he remarked. “Two nasty deaths in two days.”

  “I know,” I said. “And up until now, I never saw anybody dead, ever.”

  “Lucky you,” said D-s Miller. Then, “You last saw Mrs Kemble at lunchtime?”

  I nodded. “She was quite all right then. We talked about Fortyfoot House and what it used to be like in the old days. She was quite obsessed about it. No, no—obsessed is the wrong word. More like fretful. But her mother used to clean here when she was a girl, that’s what she said, and her mother had brought her back all kinds of stories about it. But she seemed cheerful enough.”

  “Did you see anybody else around here? Anybody who might have looked suspicious in any way?”

  Young Mr Billings black-hatted and white-faced in the shadow of the trees. But how could I tell Detective-sergeant Miller that I had seen a ghost; and that the ghost may have done Mrs Kemble harm? D-s miller was open-minded, yes. He was even prepared to believe in the supernatural. But if I started talking about hallucinations and apparitions, he wouldn’t have any choice but to regard me as a suspect. Murder, while the balance of his mind was disturbed. Detained indefinitely at Broadmoor, with all the rest of the psychopaths and ax-murderers and assorted nutters.

  “The whole place was very quiet. There was just us. Oh, and that chap who comes down to set up his fishing-nets every afternoon.”

  “Yes, I’ve talked to him.”

  The kettle began to whistle. I dropped a tea-bag into a mug and filled it up. “No sugar,” said D-s Miller, writing.

  “Do you know how she died?” I asked, cautiously.

  He didn’t look up. “We can’t be definite. It’s always the same when the crabs get to the soft tissues first. But both elbows were severely crushed, which was why she was holding her arms up the way she was, like a grasshopper, and her axis and atlas vertebrae were both crushed, too. We don’t have any idea how she sustained these injuries, not yet, but I think you can safely say that the circumstances surrounding her death are not consistent with a natural demise.”

  “That’s good policeman-talk,” I said.

  “Oh… they taught us all that at Mount Browne. That was when I was with Surrey Constabulary.”

  “What made you move?”

  He closed his notebook. “I thought it would be quieter down here. Ironic, isn’t it? My wife thought it was too bloody quiet, and left me; and here I am with two violent deaths in two days.”

  “Aren’t you going to ask me any more questions?”

  “I don’t need to. Mrs Kemble’s next-door neighbor saw her alive after you and Danny left, and the Rev. Pickering has confirmed that you came to visit him. Unless you’re capable of being in two places at once, there’s no way in the world that you could have come back here and done Mrs Kemble a mischief.”

  D-s Miller drank his tea in repetitive little sips until he had finished it. Then he got up, placed his mug in the sink, and said, “I may have to come back later. You’re not going anywhere, are you?”

  I was sure that I heard a soft, furry rustling behind the skirting-board. Had D-s Miller heard it too?

  “No,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere. You’ve seen the state of my car.”

  “I was wondering about that,” said D-s Miller, as I showed him out of the front door.

  “Act of God,” I replied.

  “Hmh,” he said. “The Lord thy God is obviously a bloody wrathful God.”

  Behind me, as he walked away, I heard it again. Scurry-scurry-scurry.

  11

  Yesterday’s Garden

  The Rev. Dennis Pickering telephoned shortly before eight o’clock to say that he would be a little late. There had been something of a contretemps between his lady parishioners about who was going to decorate the church for this year’s Harvest Festival. “I’m afraid they’re very strong-willed, some of my ladies. Valkyries, almost.”

  I stood in the hall with my eye on the photograph of “Fortyfoot House, 1888.” Young Mr Billings was now halfway across the lawn, only a few yards away from the place where his shadow still lay. Beside him walked a dark small shape that could have been anything at all. A stain on the negative, an ink-spill, a shadow. Or Brown Jenkin, the rat-creature that ran around Fortyfoot House searching and burrowing for—what? What was it searching for, what was it burrowing for? There was no food in the attic, and never any sign that rats had been gnawing the furniture or making nests out of old newspapers or trying to get into the larder.

  If Brown Jenkin was a rat, it was a pretty damn strange kind of rat. We had left cheese uncovered in the kitchen overnight, and it had remained untouched; and there had been no attempts to ransack the larder—although, admittedly, most of what it contained was tins of corned beef and Heinz Spaghetti. Either Brown Jenkin wasn’t really a rat at all, or else it was a rat that preferred some other kind of food.

  We ate a quiet supper of lasagne and salad, and finished the wine. Danny was sleepy, and at a quarter past nine I piggybacked him up to bed, and helped him to wash his face and brush his teeth.

  As I tucked him up, he said, “Those crabs can’t come on to the land, can they?”

  I shook my head. “Definitely not.”

  “Can I leave the light on?”

  “Of course you can.”

  “The crabs can’t come into the house, can they?”

  “No, they can’t. They have to stay in the sea, otherwise they die. Listen—it was a terrible thing that you saw, but the crabs didn’t kill Mrs Kemble. She broke her neck—fell over, probably, on the rocks. The crabs can’t tell the difference between one sort of meat and another. They eat dead birds, they eat mussels, they eat anything. I’m afraid it’s nature, that’s all, and sometimes nature’s terrible.”

  I smoothed his hair back and kissed his forehead. “Sleep well,” I said, “and don’t dream about anything but licorice allsorts.”

  “I don’t like licorice allsorts any more.”

  “Well, dream about something you do like.”

  “I like women.”

  “Women? Oh. Don’t you mean girls?”

  “No, women. I hate girls.”

  Oh well, I thought, closing the door softly behind me. Like father, like son. I stood in the corridor for a moment, listening for that furtive scurrying behind the skirting-boards; or those deep, blurry, unintelligible incantations. But tonight Fortyfoot House seemed especially quiet; as if it had been blanketed in six-foot-thick kapok when none of us were looking.

  I went downstairs. Liz was in the sitting-room, cross-legged on the sofa, watching television. “Is there any more wine?” she asked me.

  I shook my head.

  “What are you going to give the Reverend Pickering to drink, then?”

  “Tea, I thought. Vicars always drink tea, don’t they?”

  “Not the vicars I know.”

  “All right, then,” I said. “I’ll walk down to the shop. I think I’ve got enough money for a giant-sized bottle of Plonko de France.”

  It was a warm night, so I didn’t need a coat. I closed the front door quietly behind me so that Danny wouldn’t hear me leaving, and then I trudged up the steep shadowy pathway to the main road.

  When you’ve lived for most of your life in the twenty-four-hour traffic roar of London and Brighton, a village like Bonchurch can seem unnervingly quiet at night. But you can hear the most alarming, unexpected noises, too. Noises that sound like dead owls, falling through the branches of drought-dried trees. Noises that sound like stoats, running low-backed through the bracken. Creaks and snaps and sudden flurries of feather and fur.

  I walked close to the damp stone wall which led toward the village store. I turned just once to look back at Fortyfoot House, but all I could see was the hunched, angular outline of its roof, behind the firs. Yet again, it looked different from this angle, as if it had turned its back on me. I had never known a house with such a dark, changeable personality. It never compromised. It was always surly and secre
tive and capable (as far as any house could be capable) of the nastiest acts of spitefulness. Some houses are soft and comfortable and wouldn’t hurt their occupants for anything. But at Fortyfoot House I kept jarring myself on the banister-rail and catching my hand on naked nails and knocking my head against door-jambs and window-frames. Even if old Harry Martin had died accidentally, it was just another example of how aggressive Fortyfoot House could be.

  I kept trying to persuade myself that nothing could really harm us; that ghosts are no more dangerous than memories. But I had a deep-seated fear that I was fooling myself—or perhaps that some dark and ill-tempered force was fooling me.

  The local stores were just about to close when I arrived. The shopkeeper was carrying in boxes of cucumbers and new potatoes, and he didn’t seem particularly pleased to see me. Inside, the store was badly lit and smelled of washing powder and strong Cheddar cheese. I went to the wine shelves and picked out a large bottle of red Piat D’Or.

  “Things are starting to get all stirred up again, then,” the shopkeeper remarked, wrapping up my wine, his greased gray hair shining.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You’re the chap who’s working at Fortyfoot House, aren’t you?” he asked me.

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Always happens, when people try to mess around with that place.”

  “What always happens?”

  “Accidents, bad luck. Just like poor old Harry Martin.”

  “Well… it does have a bit of an atmosphere, I’ll admit that.”

  “Atmosphere?” he retorted. “You wouldn’t drag me inside that house with six bloody wild horses, I’ll tell you that much. Not with a dozen bloody wild horses.”

  As he was ringing up my wine on the till, I glanced out through the darkened window at the roadway outside. It was difficult to see clearly, because my own reflection and the reflection of the shop were superimposed on the night, but I glimpsed a figure in a brown cloak and a brown hood hurrying quickly toward Fortyfoot House. It couldn’t have been the vicar: it was far too short, and in any case it walked like a woman, with a quick, springing step. There was something about it that reminded me—unnervingly—of Liz.

  I said to the shopkeeper, “Hold on a moment,” and went outside, leaving the shopbell jangling on its spring behind me. The figure had walked quite a few yards up the road already, and was almost buried in the darkness, but as I stepped onto the pavement it briefly turned its hooded head, and I saw a pale smudge of a face. I couldn’t be sure, but it looked so much like Liz that I called out, “Liz! Liz?”

  But the figure didn’t turn around again: it kept hurrying on, until the darkness swallowed it completely.

  I went back into the store. The shopkeeper was waiting with my change and an unimpressed expression on his face. “Can I close up now?” he asked me.

  “I’m sorry,” I apologized. “I thought I saw somebody I knew.”

  He didn’t reply, but followed me closely to the shop door, and locked it when I had left. I turned around as I walked away, and he was standing watching me, his face half-concealed by a sign saying Sorry! We’re Closed! Even For Brooke Bond Tea! His eyes glistened in the lenses of his spectacles like freshly-opened oysters.

  I walked into the darkness and my footsteps echoed against the stone walls beside the road. The more I thought about it, the more convinced I was that I had seen Liz hurrying past the store; or someone so like her that she could have been her twin. But what would Liz have been doing, rushing along the roadway like that, in a long brown hooded cloak? And how could she have possibly got there? I had left her behind at Fortyfoot House and she certainly hadn’t overtaken me along the way.

  I reached the last turn in the road and the rooftops of Fortyfoot House appeared behind the trees. A series of triangles and humps and decahedrons, from which chimneys rose like tall top-heavy spires.

  As I came closer, I found that I was staring more and more intently at the pattern into which the roof was forming itself. It was coming closer and closer to a shape which I recognized; and gradually the meaning of its extraordinary and awkward design began to emerge. Halfway around the last bend in the road, I stopped, and stared at the rooftop, and knew that I had correctly guessed the implications of Fortyfoot House right from the very beginning, almost as if I had been prepared for my arrival here, long before I had any inkling that I was coming.

  The rooftops, from this viewpoint, formed the exact shape of the Sumerian temple in the National Geographic, the temple which the Turks had destroyed. The same ridges, the same points, the same eye-defeating perspectives.

  If the girl Kezia Mason really had designed this roof herself, then old Mr Billings had brought more than an East End urchin to Fortyfoot House. He had brought a centuries-old intelligence that knew how to erect buildings that were supernaturally free from the usual limitations of space and time.

  I stood absolutely stock still, staring at the hunched black profile of that roof, feeling as if I had been struck either with great genius or complete madness. Saul, on the road to Tarsus. It was a huge feeling; a feeling that gave me a singing in my ears; as if I had been thrown out into the vacuum of space and had suddenly and instantaneously understood God.

  I returned to the house. A beige Renault estate was parked neatly next to the wreck of my Audi; so the Rev. Pickering had obviously arrived already.

  Liz opened the front door while I was still trying to find my key. “The vicar’s here,” she told me; and then, “what is it?” because I was obviously looking at her oddly.

  “Have you been out at all?” I asked her.

  “Out? Of course not. I’ve been waiting for you to bring the wine. Why?”

  I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter.”

  She took the bottle of wine while I went through to the sitting-room. Dennis Pickering was sitting in one of the old half-collapsed armchairs, talking to Danny. He stood up when I came in, and shook my hand. He looked a little tired, and there was tomato-soup on the lapel of his green tweed sports-jacket.

  “What about a glass of wine?” I asked him.

  “Perhaps later,” he said, looking around. “I have to confess, David, that this house makes me feel rather agitated. Pure imagination, of course—but in this business one has to have rather a lot of imagination—not to mention faith.”

  “I suppose you’ve heard about Mrs Kemble?” I asked him.

  He nodded. “Regretfully, yes. One of my ladies called me. It was terrible, tragic. The police seem to think that she was walking on the rocks when she slipped and fell and hit her head, and drowned. It’s not difficult to do, especially for a woman getting on in years—and you can easily drown in just a few inches of water. A young boy from Shanklin drowned last summer, in similar circumstances, at almost the same spot.”

  I said, “We haven’t heard any noises this evening—unless there were any when I was out buying the wine.” Danny shook his head. “I thought I heard the rat, that’s what woke me up, but that was all.”

  “Where did you hear that?” I asked him.

  “Upstairs, in the attic.”

  “Maybe the attic would be a good place for you to start,” I suggested to Dennis Pickering.

  “Well… why not?” he said, rubbing his hands together. “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

  “I didn’t know that the Church of England encouraged the teachings of Chairman Mao,” I said, with a smile.

  Danny begged, “Can I come?”

  “No, I’m sorry,” I told him. “I don’t think this is going to be dangerous, but it could be scary.”

  “I don’t mind being scared.”

  “Well, I mind you being scared; and there’s an end to it.”

  “I could hold the torch,” said Danny.

  “I said no. You can stay down here and watch television. We’ll only be up in the attic.”

  Dennis Pickering said, “A short prayer, perhaps?”

  I glanced at Liz u
ncomfortably. “If you think it’ll help,” I told him.

  He gave me a bland smile. “It certainly won’t do any harm.”

  He clasped his hands together and closed his eyes and said, “O Lord, protect us in this time of adversity. Protect us against evils known and unknown; and bring us safely out of the darkness of fear and uncertainty into the unfailing light of Thy holy truth.”

  “Amen,” we all mumbled.

  First, I took Dennis Pickering to see the photograph of Fortyfoot House in the hallway. Even before we were anywhere near it, I could see that young Mr Billings had returned to his original position, and that the shadowy hair-creature which had been accompanying him across the lawns had disappeared. Or nearly disappeared—because, as I came closer, I saw that the back doorway of Fortyfoot House was slightly ajar, and that the smallest suggestion of a dark shadow was disappearing into it. Brown Jenkin’s tail?

  Dennis Pickering bent forward and inspected the photograph carefully. “Yes,” he said, “that’s Billings-the-Younger, no doubt about it. There’s a rather grim engraved portrait of him in The Spotted Dog public house, just outside Ventnor, although why that should be, I have no idea.”

  “For the past day or so, he’s been in a different position,” I said.

  Dennis Pickering stared at me. “I’m sorry? You mean that the photograph was hanging somewhere else?”

  “No, no. Young Mr Billings has been in a different position. He moves around, inside the photograph. Yesterday, he was walking across the grass, just here, holding hands or paws or whatever with something that looked like Brown Jenkin.”

  Dennis Pickering looked back at the photograph, and then back at me. “You’re quite certain of that?”

  “Quite certain.”

  “And what about you, Liz?” Dennis Pickering asked her. “Did you see it, too?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said.

  I frowned at her. “You’re not sure?”

  She looked away. “I’m finding this all very hard to deal with,” she said. “I don’t know whether to believe my eyes or not.”