There was no road or path ahead of us, not even a track, just the faint indication of old ruts where at some point a tractor might have gone, and even they soon ended.
“Make a U-turn when possible. Return to a marked road.”
Michael stopped the car. “So that’s as far as she’ll take us. We’ll have to rely on my own internal GPS the rest of the way.”
We got out. He changed his brown loafers for a pair of brilliant white sports shoes that looked as if they’d never been worn, took an OS map out of the glove-box, and showed me the red X he had marked on an otherwise blank spot. “And this is where we are now.”
“Why isn’t it on the map?
He shrugged.
I persisted. “You must have thought about it.”
He shrugged again and sighed. “Well, you know, there are places considered too sensitive, of military importance, something to do with national security, that you’re not allowed to take pictures or even write about. There’s an airfield in Norfolk, and a whole village on Salisbury Plain –”
“They’re not on maps?”
“Not on any maps. And those are just the two examples I happen to know. There must be more. Maybe this house, or the entire coomb, was used for covert ops in the war, or is owned by MI5, used as a safe house or something.”
My skin prickled with unease. “Maybe we shouldn’t go there.”
“Are you kidding? You’re not going to wimp out on me now!”
“If it’s so secret that it’s against the law –”
“Do you see any ‘No Trespassing’ signs?” He waved his arms at the empty field around us. “It’s a free country; we can walk where we like.”
I took a deep breath, and thought about that airfield in Norfolk. I was pretty sure I knew the place he meant; it was surrounded by barbed wire fences, decorated with signs prohibiting parking and picture-taking on the grounds of national security. It was about as secret as the Post Office Tower. I nodded my agreement.
It was a good day for walking; dry, with a fresh, invigorating breeze countering the warmth of the sun. For about fifteen minutes we just walked, not speaking, and I was feeling very relaxed when I heard him say, “There it is.”
Just ahead of us, the land dropped away unexpectedly steeply, and we stopped and stood gazing down into a deep, narrow, wooded valley. Amid the turning leaves the golden brown of the thatched roof blended in, and shadows dappled the whitewashed walls below with natural camouflage. If we hadn’t been looking for it, we might not have seen it, but now, as I stared, it seemed to gain in clarity, as if someone had turned up the resolution on a screen. I saw a wisp of smoke rise from the chimney, and caught the faint, sweet fragrance of burning wood.
Michael was moving about in an agitated way, and it took me a few moments to realize he was searching for the best route down. “This way,” he called. “Give me your hand; it’s a bit tricky at first, but I then I think it should be easier.”
I was suddenly nervous. “I don’t think we should. There’s someone there.”
“So? They’ll invite us in. We’ll ask how long they’ve had the place and if they’d consider selling.”
I saw that the notion of an MI5 safe house was far from his mind, if he had ever believed it. He wasn’t even slightly afraid, and struggled to comprehend my reason for wanting to turn back.
“Look, if you want to wait for me here...”
I couldn’t let him go by himself. I checked that my phone was on, and safely zipped into my pocket, and then I let him help me down to the first ledge, and the one after that. Then it got easier, although there was never anything as clear as a path, and on my own I’m certain I would have been lost, since my instinct, every time, was to go in a direction different from his. He really could hold a map in his head. At last we emerged from a surprisingly dense wood into a clearing from which we could see a windowless side wall.
I fell back and followed him around towards the front. Pebbles rolled and crunched gently underfoot on the path to the front door. I wondered if he had a plan, and what he would say to whoever answered the door: was he really going to pretend we were interested in buying?
Then I looked up and as I took in the full frontal view, I knew I had been here before. It was the strongest wave of déjà vu I’d ever felt, a sickening collision between two types of knowledge: I knew it was impossible, yet I remembered this visit.
The memory was unclear, but frightening. Somehow, I had come here before. When my knock at the door had gone unanswered, I’d peeked through that window on the right, and saw something that made me run away in terror.
I could not remember anything of what I had seen; only the fear it had inspired was still powerful.
Michael knocked on the door, then glanced over his shoulder, impatient with me for hanging back.
I wanted to warn him, but of what? What could I say? I was in the grip of a fear I knew to be irrational. I managed to move a little closer to Michael and the door, telling myself that nothing could compel me to look through that window.
We waited a little while, but even after Michael knocked again, more loudly, almost pounding, there was no reply. I relaxed a little, thinking we were going to get away with it, but when I spoke of leaving, he insisted, “Not until I find out who lives here, what it’s all about. There is someone here – I can see a light – look, through that window –”
I moved back; I wouldn’t look.
“I think I can smell cooking. They’re probably in the kitchen. Maybe a bit deaf. I’m going to try the back door. You coming? Suit yourself.”
I didn’t want to stay, but wanted even less to follow him around the back, so I waited, wrapping my arms around myself, feeling a chill. The sun didn’t strike so warmly in this leafy hollow. I checked my phone for the time and was startled to see how much of the afternoon was gone. I wondered if I should call David to warn him I’d be late, but decided to wait for Michael.
I didn’t like to keep checking the time because it made me more nervous, but at least five minutes had passed when I felt I had no choice but to walk around to the back of the house to look for him.
I had no sense of déjà vu there; I was certain I’d never seen the peeling black paint that covered the solidly shut back door, or the small windows screened by yellowish, faded curtains that made it impossible to see inside.
“Michael?” I didn’t like the weak, wavering sound of my voice, and made myself call out more loudly, firmly, but there was no reply. Nothing happened. I knocked as hard as I could on the back door, dislodging a few flakes of old paint, and as I waited I listened to the sound of leaves rustling in the wind; every once in a while one would fall. I felt like screaming, but that would have been bloody stupid. Either he had heard me or he hadn’t. Either he was capable of reply – could he be hiding, just to tease me? – or he wasn’t. And what was I going to do about it?
As I walked back around to the front of the house I was assailed by the memory of what I had seen when I looked through the window the last time I was here – if that had ever happened. I’d seen a man’s foot and leg – I’d seen that there was someone inside the house, just sitting, not answering my knock, and the sight of some stranger’s foot had frightened me so badly that I’d run away, and then repressed the memory of the entire incident.
Now I realized it must have been a dream that I recalled. It had that pointless, sinister atmosphere of a bad dream. Unfortunately, it now seemed like a precognitive dream.
Nothing had changed in front of the house. I got out my phone and entered the number Michael had given me. As I heard it ringing in my ear, I heard the familiar notes from ‘The William Tell Overture’sounding from inside the house. I clenched my teeth and waited. When the call went to his voice-mail, I ended it and hit re-dial. Muffled by distance, the same tinny, pounding ringtone played inside the house, small but growing in volume until, once again, it was cut off by the voice mail programme.
I knew what I would see if I looked t
hrough the window, so I didn’t look. I wanted to run away, but I didn’t know where to go. It would be dark soon. I had to do something.
The front door opened easily. Tense, I darted my gaze about, fearful of ambush, although the place felt empty. To my right, I could see into a small, dark sitting room where an old man sat, or slumped, in an armchair.
He was a very, very old man, almost hairless, his skin like yellowed parchment, and appeared to have been dead for some time. It would have been his foot I would have seen if I’d looked through the window: his feet in brand new, brilliantly white sports shoes. But even as I recognized the rest of the clothes – polo shirt, jeans, soft grey hooded jacket, even the phone and car-keys in his pockets – I clung to the notion of a vicious trick, that someone had stolen Michael’s clothes to dress an old man’s corpse. How could the vigorous fifty-eight-year-old that I’d seen a few minutes ago have aged and died so rapidly?
I know now that it is what’s left of Michael, and that there is no one else here.
I am not able to leave. I can open the door, but as soon as I step through, I find myself entering again. I don’t know how many times I did that, before giving up. I don’t know how long I have been here; it seems like a few days, at most, but when I look in the mirror I can tell by my hair that it must be two months or more.
There’s plenty of food in the kitchen, no problems with plumbing or electricity, and for entertainment, besides all the books, there’s an old video-player, and stacks of videos, as well as an old phonograph and a good collection of music. I say ‘good collection’ because it might have been planned to please Michael and me, at least as we were in the ’80s.
Having found a ream of paper in the bottom drawer of the desk in the other parlour (the room where Michael isn’t) I decided to write down what has happened, just in case someone comes here someday, and finds my body as I found his. It gives me something to do, even though I fear it is a pointless exercise.
While exploring the house earlier – yesterday, or the day before – I found evidence of mice – fortunately, only in one place, in the other sitting room. There were droppings there, and a nest made of nibbled paper, as if the mouse had devoted all its energy to the destruction of a single stack of paper. One piece was left just large enough for me to read a few words in faded ink, and recognize Michael’s handwriting, but there was not enough for me to make sense of whatever he was trying to say.
PIED-À-TERRE
STEPHEN VOLK
Stephen Volk does ghosts like nobody’s business. He is, after all, the writer behind the legendary TV ‘hoax’ Ghostwatch, the drama series Afterlife and the forthcoming film The Awakening. Here Stephen presents us with a story that is a cry for justice, a common theme in tales of revenants, but ‘Pied-à-terre’ isn’t so much a call for vengeance from beyond the grave, as a deeply affecting story whose ghost continues to call to us long after the tale is done.
SHE PUT HER sunglasses on and raised them onto her head as she consulted the Google Maps print-out diligently folded and tucked between pages ninety-eight and ninety-nine of her A-Z. Leaving the Underground, she turned right into Fulham Road and followed the blue arrows, the print-out clutched in her hand. She hurried past Pizza Express, Nando’s and the Nat West, mentally ticking off the landmarks, then took a right into North End Road before crossing to the other side of the street. On the Tube map it hadn’t looked far from Hammersmith where she’d parked the car in a multi-storey just outside the congestion zone – clever girl! – but she hadn’t made allowance for the delay at Earl’s Court, and now she was concerned about being late for her appointment.
Typical, she could hear Rollo saying when she told him.
Not typical, actually, Miriam thought, as if answering him back, which she never did. I’m never typically late, Rollo. You know that. I’m always really punctual, you know that. She felt a little rash heating her neck as she even thought it, and felt foolish and annoyed at herself for feeling foolish and annoyed.
She knew why she was feeling like this – on edge, twitchy. It was because, just before driving to London, she and Rollo had had a row. Not a major one. Not a really major one, but a row nevertheless. It had always been the plan they’d do this together. But when it came to it, Rollo was on his laptop. You go and look, I’m busy, he’d said, not taking his eyes from the illuminated screen. I’ll see it later. I don’t care. You make the decision. You can make a decision, can’t you?
Yes. But that wasn’t the point. She’d wanted to do it together. They were husband and wife. That’s what husbands and wives did. Look at houses together. Make the decision – together.
But now she started to think she was being unfair. Why was she always so unfair? He was probably back there, still on his computer, still working. And she’d done the two-hour drive to London – of course, why not her? She had nothing else to do. And he probably wanted to get it done today so that they could spend a nice Sunday together relaxing in the garden with a jug of Pimm’s and the Sunday papers littered around them on the grass. That’s probably what he was thinking. He was probably thinking of her.
The sun blinked behind red brick chimney stacks and black slate roofs, back-lighting television aerials and satellite dishes.
The street, as she walked along it, gave her a faint pang of nostalgia, unremarkable and unspectacular though it was. Certainly not salubrious. Just the kind of street of Victorian (or was it Edwardian?) houses you found all over London, with bay windows on the ground and second floors, and a plain, square, attic window above that. She could already picture the attic room; she had been brought up in a house not dissimilar in Tottenham, near Black Boy Lane, equidistant between Spurs and the MFI her parents used to frequent every weekend in their devotion to DIY. She recognised the type of apologetic yard they had in front of them cordoned by squat brick walls, barely big enough to house your wheelie bin – presumably now their sole purpose other than collecting weeds and straggly, dying plants. As if dying plants were some sort of design feature and envious neighbours peeked between net curtains deciding they had to have them to keep up with the Joneses.
37 Shorrold’s Road, SW6...
Miriam read the address on the information from the estate agent.
37...
She raised her sunglasses again and squinted at the numbers on the doors or in cheap plastic decals on the gates. But there was no reason to, now she could see ahead of her a ‘For Sale’ sign, and since it was the only one in the street, made a bee-line for it.
For a moment she felt slightly woozy and lowered her shades back onto the bridge of her nose. Perhaps she’d inadvertently stared right into the sun or something – that was it, probably – because she was suddenly aware of a pain just above her right eye, a tooth-achy pain that she got sometimes when her sinuses were blocked, or, perhaps now, when there was a lot of pollen in the air. Was there a lot of pollen in the air?
She wanted to get inside. Indoors. Rest her eyes. Dry eyes. Itchy eyes, now. Get rid of this damned headache. Where had it come from all of a sudden?
She saw no doorbell, so she rapped the knocker. To her surprise, the door opened an inch under the ever-so-slight force. It had been left on the snib, as her mum used to say. On the snib? Did anyone even use that expression any more? On the snib.
“Hello?”
She prodded it ajar and stepped gingerly into the narrow hallway, feeling a refreshing coolness spreading over her back where the sun used to be.
“Hi.”
A cheery face popped out from the doorway of what was obviously the sitting room. Nice face. Nice smile, Miriam thought instantly.
“I’m Suzy, from the estate agent’s.” A hand extended to shake hers. Young hand. Perfect fingernails. Soft.
“Hi. I’m Miriam Lehr. Did we speak on the phone?”
“Did we...?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“Oh...”
“I think it was a man.”
“Oh, then
you’re right. It wasn’t me!” Suzy from the estate agent’s chuckled. Miriam did the same, as best she could.
She liked the sound of the girl’s laughter, though. It said, I’m a bit flaky but I’m all right, you can trust me. She didn’t think it was a ploy. It was just the way the girl was. There was no ‘side’ to her – another of her mum’s expressions that Miriam wasn’t entirely sure wasn’t past its sell-by date.
“You don’t mind, do you?”
“No,” Miriam said. “No. Why should I mind?”
“Good.” Suzy from the estate agent’s had the ring of her car keys round one finger, jangling like jewellery when she moved, hugging the house specifications to her chest. Miriam fleetingly saw something else clutched there – a greeting card still in its cellophane wrapper. She could make out the words ‘Mum’ and ‘50’ on it above the estate agent’s cuff. “Right, then. Do you have any questions up front, or do you want to look around in your own time?”
“I’d like to look around in my own time, if that’s all right.”
“Be my guest. And anything you want to know, please fire away. That’s what I’m here for.” Suzy smiled and the smile was as nice to see as her laughter was to listen to.
“It’s warm, isn’t it?” Miriam fanned herself with the A-Z.
“Yes. I love it.”
“It’s a bit too much for me, actually.”
“Is it? I love it. I’m a bit of a sun bod, I’m afraid.” Suzy made a face, like it was a character fault of hers. A nice air of self-deprecating charm, there, under the confidence – both things Miriam envied. Deeply.
“I can tell.” Miriam had noticed the other woman’s tan as soon as she’d seen her. “Have you been abroad?”
“No. I had a great day this weekend windsurfing. Got myself a new sail!”
Miriam would have liked to hate her for saying that, and for slightly miming the action, but it was said in a completely un-showy manner, with almost childish glee. A guilty secret she wanted to share. And who could be mean-spirited enough to begrudge her that? In all honesty, with her perfect teeth and lipstick, Miriam thought, the young woman beside her had everything going for her. She was trim. Fit. Beautiful. Possibly still full of memories of the beach – the sport, the swim suits, yellow sand on wet skin, the sound of crashing waves, the boyfriend – wine (sparkling wine?), kisses... Obviously something blissfully romantic...
The Future of Horror Page 3
