The Stranger Upstairs

by Melanie Raabe

  ‘You know that.’

  ‘No, I don’t!’

  What on earth is going on?

  ‘You do know. Tell me.’

  I can’t take any more.

  ‘I don’t know!’ I sob.

  ‘You do know. Tell me.’

  It is suddenly quiet.

  Nothing.

  Only my breathing.

  His breathing.

  The creak of the boards.

  ‘You killed him,’ I whisper.

  My body is light.

  The stranger looks at me calmly. ‘You killed him,’ he says.

  ‘Why are you doing this to me?’ I whisper.

  ‘You know why.’

  ‘Because of what happened back then,’ I rasp. ‘Because of what we did.’

  With a sweeping movement, he bends down to me. ‘What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?’

  My stomach lurches. Light flickers in front of my eyes.

  ‘What did you do?’ he asks.

  A chasm opens.

  ‘What did you do? Tell me!’

  I can’t.

  ‘Tell the truth!’ he shouts.

  I open my mouth—

  I can’t.

  I’m fainting.

  The stranger

  Careful now, very careful.

  I approach her slowly. At first I think she’s only shamming. This woman is no timid creature, easily spooked. She just shot at me at close range. In cold blood.

  But she really has passed out. I feel her pulse and she doesn’t stir. I don’t have to think for long. I can’t let her attack me again, can’t let her escape.

  I open the back door, grasp her beneath the arms and begin to drag her out to the garden.

  As I reach the terrace, she lets out a whimper, like a frightened child. I almost feel pity, but get a grip on myself. Philip Petersen has paid for his sins. There’s no reason his wife should get off scot-free.

  Sarah

  When I come to, I don’t immediately know where I am or what’s happened. All around me it’s dark—I can’t see a thing. At first, I only hear noises—horrible and very close. A screech, and then a deep, primeval snarl, such as children might imagine coming from the devil. I try to open my eyes, but it’s an effort. I see something—a movement—and try to focus on it. The snarling stops, and there is silence. My consciousness scrapes along the edge of reality, making sparks like metal against metal, but then it slides off and I have to grope my way back up. I blink. It is no longer light but dark, and the ceiling above me is moving—no, that isn’t the ceiling—someone has spread a dark cloth over me, and the cloth is full of holes, and there’s light shining in at every little hole and—nonsense, it isn’t a cloth—it’s the night sky. I’m outside.

  I hear the noises again, fiercer and more aggressive, but I can’t work out where they’re coming from. Are they meant for me? Where am I? Why do I feel so nauseous? Why is everything spinning? Am I drunk? Am I sick? I’m moving. There’s the Plough—Philip once showed me how to recognise it. Where am I going and why? I blink, and a stabbing pain in my shoulder brings me back to myself and I understand. I’m not walking—someone has hold of my shoulders and is dragging me across the grass. Am I injured? Is it a paramedic? Where is he taking me?

  Then everything comes back to me.

  The stranger is dragging me across the grass. My clothes are wet with dew and I can hear him panting. I screw up my eyes and try to move, but I’ve lost all control over my body. Has he drugged me? No, I can feel my limbs, move them—I only passed out for a moment. What is he going to do? Where is he taking me?

  The shed, I think—he’s taking me to the shed. I’m suddenly icy cold and have to tense all my muscles to stop myself from shaking uncontrollably. Again I hear the eerie noises and realise that it’s cats fighting in a nearby garden, but that hardly makes the noise less frightening.

  Then the stranger stops. He’s dragged me right to the other side of the grass.

  I suppress a whimper when I realise what he’s planning.

  The stranger

  Keep going.

  Focus on the task in hand.

  She has caught me off my guard—again. Now I must take back control.

  The caterwauling has stopped. I deposit her body on the grass and open the shed door. For a moment I stare into the darkness. It’s not much more than a wooden box—no windows. I can vaguely make out the shapes of garden tools: spades, rakes, a roll of hose on a hook, watering cans. It smells of timber and soil.

  I lean against the doorframe to recover, breathing in and out, slowly and deeply, eyes closed, concentrating on the rise and fall of my chest until my heart finally stops pounding and the panting subsides. I’m running my hand over the metal bolt, trying to gauge its strength, when I glimpse movement at the other end of the garden, hear a rustling by the fence. I squint into the darkness, almost expecting to see a figure emerge from the shadows, but there’s nothing there.

  Am I seeing things? Hearing things? Keep going, I tell myself. Do what needs to be done.

  I take a deep breath, then turn to pick Sarah up, bundle her into the shed, lock her in.

  I freeze.

  She’s not there.

  Adrenaline floods my system. There’s only one thought in my head: catch her, catch her, catch her.

  She can only be in the house. I’m back inside within seconds, looking left, looking right, calling out. ‘Sarah!’

  The kitchen’s empty. She’s not in the hall, not in the living room. I feel a draught and, following it, I realise the front door’s open.

  She’s gone.

  Damn.

  I stare out onto the street—nothing.

  Furious, I close the door and turn round.

  It hits me full on.

  Pain explodes in my eyes and throat. I can’t breathe, can’t get my bearings. I put my hand to my face. I try to get some air in my lungs, try to open my eyes, but they’re burning. I press my fists into my eye sockets. I gasp and fall to my knees. I cough, I gag, I retch.

  I can’t see her, but I can hear her. She’s close. For a moment I think she’s going to seize her chance and kick me—in the head, in the belly. I’m utterly defenceless. I raise my arms to shield my head. I steel myself, prick my ears, hear her footsteps dying away. Then silence. Then the front door. Then nothing.

  Sarah

  The moon is full and red as blood, the street ahead empty. There are people all around me, behind walls and windows, even if I can’t see them—but I might just as well be on Mars. I am alone. A cacophonous symphony clangs in my head. I run and run. My handbag, which I had the presence of mind to pick up, is knocking against my hip and I’m shod only in flimsy pumps which, in my blind panic, were all I could find in the hall. If he catches you now, he’ll kill you, says a voice in my head. If he catches you now, he’ll kill you, if he catches you now, he’ll kill you. The voice is high-pitched and frantic and I believe it. When I come to the end of the street, I duck into a doorway and look back. He hasn’t followed me—how could he? I’m still amazed at the devastating effect of the pepper spray I’d been carrying around in my bag for months. I can still see the stranger’s face, contorted with fear. I hear his gasps, see him collapse to the floor, coughing and cursing. I have to cough too and my eyes are smarting—I got a tiny whiff of the pepper spray myself.

  The images flood my mind again: the dark road, my anger, Philip’s face, the rumbling, the black bundle on the asphalt lit only by the red of my tail-lights.

  The two of us driving away.

  As I’m trying to get a grip on my senses, a big black car comes whizzing round the corner and zooms past me. I know that car. I watch it stop outside my house, watch the door open and a man get out. It’s like a slap in the face. The noise of the car door slamming echoes in the night. Johann—the man I would have trusted with my life until recently—walks up to the front door without glancing left or right and raises his arm to ring the doorbell. As the door opens, a shaft o
f light falls on him, illuminating his face. I watch from a safe distance. The men exchange a few words, inaudible from where I’m standing. I don’t know what I was expecting. Maybe I was still hoping that Johann was on my side.

  My limbs feel so heavy, it’s as if I were lugging lead weights. Johann’s betrayal cuts me to the quick, but it’s really something else that is preying on my mind.

  I feel my finger crooked on the trigger, feel the resistance as I squeeze it—reluctantly the first time, automatically the second.

  I see the stranger keeling over backwards, his arms flailing.

  I hear his laugh, echoing in my ears, the sound of his voice.

  Killer instinct.

  The real Sarah.

  Again I hear his voice.

  You know why.

  His words.

  What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?

  For years, that fateful night was erased from my memory, locked away deep down inside me. Now a single question has washed it to the surface. I hear the stranger’s voice as if on endless loop: What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?

  Killed someone, I think. I killed someone. That’s the worst thing I’ve ever done, the worst thing anyone has ever done, the worst thing you can do on this earth.

  I breathe deeply. The tickle in my throat from the pepper spray has gone—only my eyes still smart.

  What do I do now? Where do I go now?

  I can’t go back to my house.

  I stand in the middle of the road, shaded from the moonlight by the canopy of trees. Out of the corner of my eye I see something move. I give a start and, spinning round, find myself face to face with a fox, frozen mid-movement and staring at me, barely ten metres away. Its eyes shine in the darkness, and I think I can make out the red of its coat, although it’s so dark I see the world only in greys and blues. A fox—Philip would have liked that. Philip loved animals, whereas I prefer to admire them from a distance. Cats, wolves, foxes—I find their eyes unnerving. They look as if they know something I don’t.

  This creature stands quite still. It looks as if it’s thinking. Nonsense, I tell myself. Animals don’t think. They act from instinct—a bit like you these last few days.

  I too stand quite still.

  I’ve often read that German cities are full of foxes, but the sudden appearance of this sly-faced animal makes it seem more like an apparition—the fox from the fairytales and fables Leo is so fond of, the wily fox and his tricks. What is it trying to tell me? Maybe because I knocked my head when I fainted, or maybe because I’ve barely eaten or slept for days, I almost expect the fox to open its mouth and talk to me.

  We look at each other for a moment, then the fox scampers off.

  The stranger

  For some minutes I lay on the hall floor in a pool of my own sweat and saliva and vomit, thinking I was going to die. Then, very gradually, the cramps eased off, the coughing subsided and I could breathe again. I dragged myself to the bathroom. It wasn’t until I had rinsed the snot off my face that I was able to think straight.

  By the time the doorbell rang and I saw the old man on the doorstep, I was ready to keep going.

  That woman took everything I had. I’m not going to let her go unpunished.

  Sarah

  The night city has never seemed so hostile. The dark is darker than usual, the light of the street lamps dimmer. Everywhere shadows reach out for me, everywhere loose cobblestones wait to trip me up.

  My thoughts take a while to settle. I walk on blindly, not noticing where I’m going, until I find myself at the nearest underground station. What am I doing here? The digital display tells me there’s a train leaving for the city centre in just under half an hour. I sit down, glancing across at the escalator that carried me down and has now come to a standstill. I’m sure the stranger didn’t follow me—I’m sure no one followed me. But I have to be careful. Now that I know so much about Johann, and especially if my suspicions are correct…

  Goosebumps spread over my arms as I hear Johann’s voice in my head: ‘You could do good things with Philip’s money. You could help people if you wanted.’

  Yes, I think. And when you say ‘people’, you mean yourself, don’t you, Johann? You and your company, which the papers say is close to bankruptcy—and which you are determined to save, because it means everything to you—because it is to you what Philip was to me.

  But if it all boils down to money, I suddenly think, what’s all this talk about truth?

  Then it dawns on me.

  Diversionary tactics. It’s so simple. I thought there was some clear motive for the stranger’s threats and insinuations. But in fact they were extremely vague—nothing about anyone being knocked down, or about a hit-and-run, or about me at the wheel. He was simply trying it on and happened to hit the mark. How did he know I had something to hide? Well, don’t we all? Don’t we all feel guilty about something? Only with me he really hit the jackpot. Or did he?

  Did he?

  That terrible night.

  Don’t think about it now—not now.

  Don’t go to pieces.

  Johann and ‘Vincent’ were trying to divert my attention from what was really going on—just until they had carried through their plan. And, idiot that I am, I was taken in.

  Johann is right. It always boils down to money in the end—certainly with people like him.

  The ground beneath my feet is pitching as if I were on a ship. I close my eyes, but it only makes the dizziness worse. I’m having trouble concentrating.

  I see before me the face of the man the stranger spoke to the other day—the man who struck me as so familiar. I have to talk to that man. Maybe he can answer my questions. At last I have a goal. At last I’m not just running away.

  The underground station is deserted and has a ghostly feel, like all places absolved of their function—the dark aisles of a supermarket at night, lecture theatres, swimming pools, law courts after hours. Who knows what goes on in such places when the last person has left and the lights have been put out—or, indeed, what goes on anywhere when we’re not looking?

  My eyes fall on the stairs next to the escalator, where someone has sprayed a message in red paint, one word to a step:

  MONSTERS

  DON’T

  SLEEP

  UNDER

  YOUR

  BED

  THEY

  SLEEP

  INSIDE

  YOUR

  HEAD

  I hear the escalators start up and see them roll down, step by step by step. Maybe I should jump to my feet, maybe I should hide, maybe I should run towards the other exit—but I’m too tired. I stare at the clanking escalator, and for a few seconds there’s nothing to be seen. Then a pair of shoes appears, trouser legs, a male torso in a black T-shirt, a neck, a head. The man glances briefly in my direction, then walks past me and sits down some way away. I wonder where he might be heading—it’s too late for the night shift and too early for morning shift. He takes his phone from his trouser pocket and begins to swipe. I heave a sigh of relief.

  It’s still a while until the train is due and I have nothing to do but wait. I look at the graffiti on the wall opposite. Next to huge silver letters that make no sense, a stylised bee is hovering with a fierce look on its face and a nasty-looking sting. It reminds me of something I read about bumblebees recently. That’s right, bumblebees and lime trees. Distractedly, I take my phone from my bag, unlock it and type ‘dead bumblebees’ and ‘lime trees’ into Google’s search field.

  I read that huge numbers of bumblebees die under lime trees every year, but that it has nothing to do with toxins or pollution or anything like that. The bumblebees apparently fly off in search of food with almost no energy reserves, and because the lime trees don’t have enough nectar, the bees simply starve to death. Scientists sometimes find more than a thousand starved bumblebees per tree.

  As I’m reading this, the train draws into the station. I am amazed that the half-hour has pass
ed so quickly—did I drop off for a few minutes? I get up. My body feels very light. I am, by now, no longer alone with the man whose arrival gave me such a fright. A small group of late-night revellers—seven, no, eight, people—also get up from their seats and cross the platform. No one gives me a second glance. The train comes hurtling towards us—its doors open, swallow us up and close again. The people in my compartment dig out books or phones, or simply lean their heads against the windows and close their eyes. Their weary faces are painted yellow and grey by the fluorescent light.

  Blinking to keep my tiredness at bay, I work out where I need to change trains. My brain longs for silence, for oblivion. The gentle rattle and shake of the carriage begins to lull me to sleep. No, I think, not yet.

  I get up. Grab hold of a strap. Stay awake. Think of Johann. Want to cry. Don’t cry. Stare out of the grubby train window and watch the stations flying past. We stop again, just as another train stops on the opposite platform—and for a brief, surreal moment I think I see Philip through the window as we move off.

  Impossible.

  An illusion.

  Really?

  Yes, really.

  How can you be so sure?

  Because Philip would look older. The man I saw looked the way Philip used to, seven years ago. It’s my mind playing tricks on me, like when he first went missing and the city was suddenly full of his doppelgangers and hardly a day went by that I didn’t run after some stranger and grab his shoulder—only to be disappointed time and time again.

  I leave the underworld, escaping the flicker of the fluorescent light into a velvety darkness broken only by a few street lamps and the occasional neon ad. It takes me a moment to get my bearings, then I remember the way. I picture the stranger, see him before me, crossing the road, vanishing briefly and then re-emerging and ringing at the door of number forty-one.

  I trace his steps, then stand on the footpath a moment, looking up at the house. It’s the middle of the night—you can’t ring on strangers’ doors at this time of night—but I can’t bother myself with that just now. Still, I hesitate. Perhaps I should be afraid of the man who lives here—but no, I’m past being afraid. I ring the doorbell, leaving my finger on the button for a long time—three seconds, four, five. Then I wait. It is silent. Nobody comes. No light goes on in the house. I try to be patient, try to imagine someone being torn from sleep—taking time to work out that it was the doorbell that woke him. I try to imagine this someone sitting up dazedly, realising that he’s naked, that he left his pyjamas off because of the heat—that he can’t go to the door like that. I imagine him groping for something to put on, hurriedly pulling on a pair of trousers and—