Under a Watchful Eye

by Adam Nevill

  Seb slipped inside and opened the windows to rid the room of an odour of male sweat.

  Ewan’s room was as it had been the last time he had checked on his uninvited guest’s recuperation. The duvet was crumpled from where Ewan had been lying upon the bed, fully clothed. The glass of water remained on the side table.

  The bathroom was clear.

  This was the house he had known only a few days before. At least for now.

  He tried to convince himself that this, whatever he’d endured, could not continue if Ewan wasn’t around. From now on, at all times, he would need to rely upon the curious alarm signals of his instincts.

  Gripping the moon tighter, and switching on every light that he passed, Seb moved to the living area.

  When he saw that Ewan’s bin bags and rucksack had been removed, a surge of hope left him dizzy.

  The kitchen and study were also safe.

  Besides a taint of stale cider, and Ewan’s clothes, all other physical traces of the man had vanished.

  Seb searched the house again, from top to bottom, though with more confidence during the second pass. Once he felt safe enough to shut the front door, he went back upstairs.

  He slumped on the settee, holding a highball glass heavy with bourbon.

  He’s gone. Ewan had really gone. He still had the spare keys, but Seb would get the locks changed. He’d also call the police and report Ewan as a nuisance. He’d even describe this whole experience as a stalking, and would mention the threats, blackmail attempts, and anything else that he could legitimately ascribe to Ewan’s actions.

  He needn’t mention the other things.

  The course of action seemed so simple, but Seb was still stunned by how the man had overrun his life. The invasion seemed to have lasted for months, not weeks.

  Was it truly over now? Another brief surge of wishful thinking only foundered when he again considered the previous night’s visitor. He imagined that such a force would not be as easy to dispel as the vagrant who had summoned it.

  No, I mustn’t, I cannot think that way. His connection to it was Ewan, and that doorway was going to be decisively and permanently blocked now. That would end the matter. Surely.

  Seb didn’t want to be on his own. He called Becky. No one else would have any understanding of his plight, and even she might struggle with recent developments. But at least Becky had experienced something uncanny – a word he’d overused in his own fiction, but had never been able to apply to his own life, until now.

  She answered quickly, ‘Seb. Hi,’ though the wariness and lack of warmth in those two words was obvious.

  ‘Becky, thank God. You just won’t—’

  ‘I’m on my way to work. I can’t talk long. Later’s better,’ she added, but only in appeasement as if apologizing for her sharp tone. He’d expected her to ask after him. She didn’t.

  ‘Okay. I wouldn’t have called you if it wasn’t important. But things have happened, or changed since I saw you. You remember when we were in the woods, near the cove? And that dream? Well, this has all just gone to a whole new level. I—’

  ‘Seb. I don’t know what to say about that. I’m trying not to think about it at all. It’s hard to say, but the whole weekend freaked me out. You did too. I’m sorry, but you did. Everything was all wrong from the moment you met me at the train station. I’m still trying to shake that whole weekend off. I need more time. And I’m really sorry, but I don’t know how I feel about things now.’

  ‘Becky, he came! He came here, to the house. The man I told you about. The one I have been seeing. He showed up.’ He paused to rub his head, as if to loosen the right way of expressing himself. ‘Jesus. But there is . . . another that came with him. This is not easy to even talk about, let alone believe, but he brought it with him. Brought it here. It got inside the house last night. Becky, I’m in danger.’

  ‘Seb, I’m sorry. But I really do, genuinely, have to go. Now.’ It sounded as if she were running up some stairs, somewhere in distant London. He could hear her heels and her breathlessness. ‘And I’ll admit, I don’t have a clue what to say to you. I don’t even know what you want me to say. Sorry. We never . . . Well, we were never that . . . Close isn’t the right word, is it? But you know what I mean. It makes it hard for me to . . . understand this place where you are right now.’

  Seb tried to swallow a lump of misery, the size of a plum, that had formed in his throat.

  Becky switched tack and tried to make him feel better. ‘But we did try and talk about this, didn’t we? You remember? And I’m not sure what I can tell you now, that I haven’t already said.’ Was that a sliver of embarrassed condescension for his piteous need for support? Or was he only imagining a serious reduction in her respect for him?

  Seb levelled his tone. ‘I just wanted to talk to someone. To tell you what it’s been like. That was all. A friend. Someone who might understand.’ And as soon as he’d spoken he recognized and disliked the passive aggression in his voice.

  ‘Seb, don’t be like that. Please. We don’t know what happened, but whatever we thought happened, or saw . . . it frightened me. It really did. I know that much. It still does. I don’t even want to think about it. I don’t know what you are . . . going through right now—’

  ‘Going through? You think I am making it up?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘I’ve done nothing. It all just started to happen when he appeared. I told you.’

  ‘He? This guy you told me about, the university friend who never did the dishes? Well, yes. You started seeing him, and things . . .’ She could barely bring herself to say it because she thought he was mentally ill.

  Seb barely heard what she said next and only comprehended it after she’d finished speaking. ‘You weren’t yourself, Seb. Not at all, when I was with you. I’m sorry, but I’ve been thinking that sometimes when people are unwell, they create an atmosphere around themselves that’s a difficult place, a bad place even, for other people to be in. It kind of infects everyone else, you know?’

  ‘But it’s not me, it—’

  ‘And that’s how I explain this to myself. It’s like that weekend was all a part of where you are right now. Where your head is.’

  ‘Becky! For God’s sake, this is serious. He came here, to my house. Physically. He wanted me to do things for him. He made demands. Blackmail. He demanded money from me today. He’s been making threats . . . Those reviews, well guess who wrote those? He—’

  ‘Seb, sorry. I have to get off the phone. This is all terrible and don’t think that I am being unsympathetic, but I think you need to see someone. A doctor. I really do. And if someone is trying to get at you, and whatever, then you need to call the police. Not me. I don’t know what you want me to do? Sorry, I really have to go. Bye.’ Becky ended the call.

  Part 2

  THIS PRISON OF THE FLESH

  11

  I Am Not Here Any More

  Seb listed several prompts for himself on the hotel notepad. They were reminders of what he wanted to say and might deter him from saying other things, or the wrong thing, when he spoke to a police officer. The list helped him organize his thoughts, if one even lingered long enough to be seized. His mind was alternating between states; it was either a hornet nest that had been tapped hard with a stick, or a sluggish trickle of basic sentience.

  A voice with a local accent answered the call he’d made to the police station in Brixham, and Seb cleared his throat. ‘I’d like to make a complaint.’

  Complain he did. And so encouraged was he by the unexpected strength of his voice, and the apparent interest at the other end of the line, that he was asked the same question three times before the query registered. ‘You say the man’s name is Ewan Alexander?’

  ‘Yes, yes. That’s right.’ At this point Seb understood that the name was already known to the local constabulary.

  ‘Stay on the line, please. I’m putting you through to the DCI.’

  After returning home
from the Berry Head Nature Reserve, Seb had drunk steadily throughout the previous day and rendered himself unfit to contact the police at that time. Unable to countenance another night in his own home, he’d also taken a cab across the bay and checked into a hotel in Torquay. He’d then spent a night in a large and comfortable room. A night that passed without the kind of disruption he now dreaded to the point of nausea. After a long and heavy sleep he’d woken refreshed at noon.

  He still retained a sense that his sleep had been marred by hectic activity at various times during the early morning. Though he had no recollection of any specific details of what had bustled within his sleeping mind. For that he was relieved, and he hoped for a repeat experience at the same hotel tonight.

  If Ewan had returned to the house while Seb hid in Torquay, the spare key that Ewan had stolen would no longer fit the front door lock. Emergency locksmiths had been busy the previous afternoon. While they worked, Seb had pretended to neaten the edges of his lawn with the moon implement. So Ewan wasn’t setting foot inside the house again, at least not physically.

  Seb had also called and requested a comprehensive clean of the property for the coming afternoon. He’d dispose of the bed linen that Ewan had used while the cleaners were on site. Anything his uninvited guest had messed with in the kitchen would be recycled.

  He was regaining control, at last.

  Inside his hotel room, sat by the window and staring at the bay, he’d also begrudgingly contemplated the prospect of working again, something he’d not considered for a fortnight. Ewan’s disruption had been catastrophic, to his life and writing. But, as a man prone to anxiety over deadlines and contracted commitments, even in circumstances such as these, Seb ruefully mulled over the fact that only four months remained until his new book was expected at his publishers.

  If he didn’t resume work on the novel soon, and he couldn’t see how that was possible, an extension would be needed. Perhaps a schedule change would be required and he knew how his publisher loathed those.

  Nor could he guess how he’d find a way back into the problematic first draft, or how he’d recover the voice of the female narrator. Another impression formed: that the ideas, story and characters of his work in progress had been rendered thin and unconvincing by recent events.

  At least he knew what his next story would be about. Maybe for that alone he owed Ewan.

  Perhaps he should abandon the work in progress and just write the story of the past few weeks? After all, it was all that he could think about now. But in four months? It usually took him over a year to write a book. An extension would buy him some time, and he needed to find out how much time. He also had to know what his editor thought about him delivering a different book to the one contracted two years before.

  A voice appeared inside the ear he’d pressed into the phone’s handset, and addressed him by name, ‘Mr Logan.’ The police officer was taking the call outdoors and introduced himself as Detective Chief Inspector Brian Leon, CID. In the background Seb heard the swish of traffic and two other people conducting an intense conversation nearby. A dog barked and was reprimanded by its owner. ‘You say this chap has been making a nuisance of himself?’

  ‘Yes.’ Seb was ready to repeat what he’d told the officer at the station, but didn’t have an opportunity.

  ‘Where are you now, sir?’

  Because of nerves, his mind blanked and he couldn’t recall the name of the hotel. As each second passed, he also felt as if he was implicating himself in a police matter. He found the room service menu and gave the detective the name of the hotel.

  ‘I see, but you live locally?’

  ‘Yes, in Brixham. But it’s precisely because of Ewan Alexander that I’m staying here.’

  ‘Is that right?’ The detective took his time digesting the information, which increased Seb’s perturbation. ‘You told my colleague that you saw Mr Alexander yesterday?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When was the last time you saw him yesterday?’

  ‘Between four and five a.m., I think. That was the last time I saw him, but not since.’

  ‘Bit early?’

  ‘Yes . . . he was, er, staying with me.’

  ‘Staying with you?’

  ‘Well, in a manner of speaking. But the circumstances were not entirely satisfactory. To me, that is. Which is why I am making a complaint.’

  ‘Can I ask you to stay where you are, sir? I’d like to ask you a few questions in person.’

  ‘Of course,’ Seb said, and suddenly wished that he could take a drink.

  ‘I’ll come and meet you.’

  After he’d identified Ewan’s body at three in the afternoon, Seb knew he was incapable of saying much that would make sense to the police.

  He was also at risk of making an absurd statement. So he remained silent during the drive from the hospital to the police station. And during the journey, he attempted to thaw his mind from shock, in order to process the enormity of Ewan now being dead, as well as the implications for him.

  The detective then left him alone in an interview room to nurse a mug of instant coffee that went cold between his limp hands. He hadn’t been arrested and wasn’t in custody, but in the small region of his mind able to function, after seeing Ewan’s corpse in a hospital morgue, he couldn’t be sure that he wasn’t a suspect.

  Even now, the police might be watching him via the camera fixed beneath the ceiling, in one corner of the room. Wouldn’t they be adept through mere observation alone, at determining guilt or innocence?

  What he had been told, but still struggled to accept, was that Ewan had died sometime during the night before. He had died at a guest house in Paignton, near the seafront, and inside a locked room.

  The front door to the guest house had been closed and mortise-locked at ten p.m. The proprietors, an elderly married couple, had seen no one enter the building after ten p.m. The detective had shared that much with Seb after arriving at his hotel, at noon. While Seb had lingered and shivered up on Berry Head, too scared to go home, Ewan must have collected his bags from the house and made his way to Paignton.

  There had been a disagreement too, between Ewan and the proprietors of the guest house, about payment owed on a room, which Ewan promised to settle later. After that, Ewan had apparently locked himself inside the same room he’d occupied for the fortnight preceding his brief stay with Seb.

  Inside the single room, which he never left, Ewan had begun drinking. The owners of the B&B had heard the clink of cans inside one of his bags as he’d come in that morning. He’d died in the night. Six empty cider cans were found in the morning. So Ewan had been getting his load on. As had Seb, but across the bay in Torquay, and in far more comfortable surroundings and without the assistance of cheap cider. He’d supped half a bottle of Courvoisier to get through his own night.

  There had then been a brief disturbance around three in the morning from inside Ewan’s room: ‘Cries for help. That sort of thing.’ The detective hadn’t shared much more. But for Seb, that small detail had been sufficient for him to form his own ideas about what had transpired behind drawn curtains. He never shared his theory with the detective. Though, God knew, he was tempted.

  From the moment Seb met DCI Brian Leon, the police officer’s tone and mood had issued a weary acceptance concerning Ewan’s demise. He’d also seemed indifferent to the possibility of foul play. The sounds that Ewan, presumably, had made during the night in his room at the guest house were short and never repeated: ‘A quick scream. That kind of thing. Two or three, then silence. Quite upsetting for the old couple who own the place.’

  Unable to summon any response from Ewan, the owners of the guest house had let themselves into Ewan’s room at nine and found him dead. ‘Beside the bed and under the window, with his arms still reaching out, like he’d been trying to get the window open. He’d pulled the curtains down on one side.’

  At that point in the detective’s recitation of the details, Seb wasted no time infor
ming Detective Leon about Ewan’s epilepsy, and of the fit that he had witnessed inside his own home. He’d also swiftly attested to drunkenness being the probable state during Ewan’s last night alive. After all, Ewan’s sounds of distress could be attributable to someone suffering a bad turn while drunk, and the guest house owners were also certain that Ewan had spent the night alone.

  After the proprietor of the guest house had called an ambulance, the immediate clues to Ewan’s death were apparent to the first paramedics on the scene. As far as they, and then a doctor at the Torbay hospital were concerned, Ewan had died of heart failure. The doctor added a footnote that the cardiac arrest may have been triggered by shock, though this assumption pended further examination.

  The irony of the situation didn’t escape Seb. He wouldn’t have found himself in an interview room at the local police station had he not made the nuisance complaint about Ewan. There was nothing to connect the two of them. Seb had accidentally volunteered information and tied himself to the death of a visitor to the area.

  Ewan had also given the guest house a false name, ‘M. L. Hazzard’, and had paid in cash for twelve days of the fourteen days that he’d previously stayed in the room. The bill for two nights, plus the one in which he had died, were still outstanding. Ewan had also cited Arthur Machen as being his next-of-kin in the register, along with a false telephone number. The owners hadn’t thought they’d see him again, so were surprised by his return on the afternoon preceding his death. He promised to pay the outstanding bill and an extra night later that evening, but he never came out of his room alive.

  Even after death, it seemed, Ewan was able to preoccupy and disrupt Seb’s life as much as he had done when alive.

  Just before the detective reappeared in the interview room, the worst of Seb’s initial shock had begun to subside. He’d also identified his predominant reaction to the news as relief with some guilt. Until a fresh anxiety was inspired by the thought that a visitor to Ewan’s room was capable of stopping a man’s heart, and by merely appearing beside the bed.