Kieran bites his lip. His eyes narrow. Yeah. Let them forget. They'll remember.
He trudges on, tries a little push on each window he passes. Not firm in their frames, several of them. High up, though.
She knows I'm here. She'll never see me coming.
He finds another door, at the end, tucked into a corner where a dry stone wall runs down towards an area of land where the snow lies so flat he assumes it to be concrete. It's a cramped, low door of tongue-and-groove, its handle small enough to fit a wardrobe. Weaker than the others, its ability to keep people out depending mostly on the assumption that it will never be noticed.
He tries it, for luck. The handle turns uselessly in its socket: it's not attached by anything other than a few screws. It's for pulling, not fixing.
He looks up. Smiles. A Yale lock. A bloody great mansion like this, and they've got it tied up with a Yale lock.
He lifts a boot. Kicks. The door shudders in its frame, holds.
“Fuck,” says Kieran, watches his breath cloud out on frozen air. Fuck, it's cold tonight. You can tell this air's coming down from Siberia. So much for global fucking –
This time, it cracks. Not the lock, which holds. Not the panels. Kieran lets out a laugh. They've put in a new door, but they’ve left the bloody frame. Rotten old weathered timber, and the hinges are just coming free with a couple of kicks.
Oh, I'm in, he thinks. I'm in now. I'm coming.
He steps back, rubs his hands together, blows on them open-mouthed.
Something moves in the corner of his vision.
Kieran's head snaps round. There's a child standing in the snow.
“Hah!”
She's sent her out. She's done a Shining on me, sent the kid out to save herself. Sent her out in her bloody nightie and all.
She is walking with her back to him, determinedly, head down so her features are obscured in the moonlight. Walking steadily, away from him, strangely unhampered by the snow beneath her feet.
She's grown, he thinks. And what's happened to her hair? Has she dyed it or something? Did she really think a bad dye-job would put me off the scent?
“Yasmin,” he calls.
The child doesn't pause. Doesn't look up. Doesn't change her course. She is walking toward the small two-storey building down at the edge of the flat place. Walking away.
“Yasmin, it's Daddy,” he calls. “Don't be frightened.”
If she's afraid, she doesn't show it.
Why won't you look at me?
He sets off in her wake. What sort of nightie is that? It looks like it's trailing along the ground. Has she started dressing her in her own stuff, now?
She's got skinny little arms. They look slightly blue in this light. She's lost weight, a lot of it.
“Honey,” he calls, “it's me. Come on. Come to Daddy.”
His boot catches in something and he lurches forward, can't save himself. Lands face-down and catches a mouthful of ice. “Fuck,” he says again. Looks up and sees that she has already reached the shed and is standing in its shadow, watching him, a swathe of unbroken snow between her and him.
“Look, it's not funny!” he shouts. No need to fear the neighbours here. No-one to interfere. “I'm not laughing, okay? C'mere, Yasmin! Now! I'm telling you!”
She turns, goes inside.
And now he's angry. Angry with her, as well as her bitch mother. Pushes himself upright and stumble-runs in the direction his daughter has taken. Right. Have it that way. I'll just bloody take you. Take you and go, and you can find out what happens if you fight, little bitch. You're my bloody daughter. You will do what I say, whether you like it or not.
The snow gets deeper as he approaches the building; it's drifted two, three feet thick. He is too enraged to stop, to notice, to wonder why it seems unbroken, why there is no sign of her passing: he just wades, arms flailing, to the door. It's shut, of course. She thinks she can shut me out. Thinks that all it will take is a locked door and I'll be thwarted.
He steadies himself, gets balanced, kicks. More rotten wood. The screws holding the padlock staple to the outside come clean away from the stanchion. The door thuds dully back, rebounds, comes to a rest.
Kieran switches on the torch, steps inside.
It’s not a shed: it's a boathouse. One that smells of rot and fungus, like wet places do. He plays the torch over unplastered walls, over mooring post and rotten wooden steps which lead blindly down into black, scummy water. Not frozen, he notices. You'd have thought it would be frozen.
There's a dinghy, long since holed and sunk, lying prow-up in the dock, and a scrap of rope tied around the post, but otherwise there's nothing here. It's been cleared out, thoroughly: none of the pots of paint, bits of cushion, propped-up oars, you would expect. The building hasn't simply been abandoned: it's been scraped clean. A tangle of cobwebs dangles a collection of blackened dust-bunnies from the beams above his head, but otherwise the room is bare.
From above, a giggle.
Right. That's how you want to play it.
He ducks below the lintel, steps carefully onto the concrete dock. Skirts around the edge to the rough wooden stairs that lead upward from the far corner. Stands at the bottom and calls up.
“Yasmin! You might as well come down. I know you're up there.”
Silence.
He puts a hand on the wall, cranes to see her.
“You won't like it if I have to come and get you,” he threatens.
She laughs again. It's not a nice laugh. It's mocking, contemptuous. He feels the heat in his veins again. Grips the torch and strides up the stairs. I'll get you and I'll fucking –
She's in the corner. He sees her straight away because this room, like the one below it, has been stripped of its contents. She sits with her back to the wall, knees drawn up to her chest inside her loose white garment. Her head is bowed, mop of straggled tangles falling toward her knees. Her feet, poking out from beneath her hem, are bare.
“Come on,” he says. Tries to sound calm, persuasive. Starts across the floor toward her. The smell of rot and rotten things is stronger, here; trapped without an outlet. The boards feel spongy, unresponsive, beneath his boots. “You must be freezing.”
The child uncurls, abruptly, aggressively. Her face is yellow, her teeth black and snaggled, her eyes bright with rage and hatred. She's not Yasmin. She's not any child as he knows them. She's something else. Something long-lost, black and angry.
“I won't go back,” she says, and smiles a smile that holds no joy.
He is startled. Steps back, heavily. Feels the floor give, then splinter, beneath him. Hovers above the hole for a moment, hopelessly grasping at thin air, then spirals, thrashing, down into the water below.
Chapter Sixty
The shock of first hitting is like death by a thousand knives. There is a thin layer of ice on the surface, and the water below is so cold he feels his heart stop momentarily. And then he's through, still falling, and his foot catches on something, goes sideways, and he feels the ankle snap. Screams, underwater, loses his breath and chokes as he tries to take another, and then he's floundering toward the air: burning, freezing, red agony swimming across his vision.
He breaks surface, gasps, coughs, throws his arms outward to spread the weight of his body. His ankle feels as though it's being crushed in a vice and there's no strength in the leg below the knee. My boots, he thinks. My boots will drag me down. Oh, god, it's so cold, so cold. I've got to get out, get out, my God, this cold will kill me.
His skin is burning. It feels like it's been stripped with acid, like someone's stabbing red-hot needles into him. He grabs a huge, ragged breath, and swim-pulls himself toward the stairs. The top of the dock is six feet above him. The water level must have dropped over the years since the house was built.
His hand lands on wood and he knows, even before he tries it, from the sponge-like texture, the way it squeezes down beneath his grip, that it will never hold his weight.
He tries, anyw
ay. Pulls himself one, two hands'-lengths up the sloping support before he feels it crumble in his hand and he slaps back down into the lagoon. Tries again. This time a larger chunk breaks off; hurls him backwards horizontally so he catches his skull a sharp blow on the wall.
It's my coat, he thinks. My coat and my boots. They're making me heavier. I've got to get rid of them.
He holds himself steady against the wall as he struggles out of the coat. Lifts his good leg, and jabs with numb fingers at the laces. I can't. I can't do it. I can't grip.
“Hello?” he calls.
No answer.
“Hello? Can you hear me?”
No response.
Kieran swims back to hold on to the rotten upright of the stairs. Clings to it like a child to a hot water bottle. The cold is really taking a grip now, great gusts of shivering racking his torso.
“Hello?” he calls again, “I'm in trouble, down here. You've got to help me.”
In the gloom, a small figure, indistinct, pale against the night, leans out over the hole in the ceiling. She doesn't speak.
“Look,” he says, and stops to breathe. Coughs, and spits into the water. “I'm sorry if I frightened you. But you've got to help me. I can't get out of here. The stairs are rotten and the walls – I think I've broken my ankle. I'm going to get really ill really quickly if you don't help me.”
No movement. He finds the torch in his pocket – thank God they're all waterproof these days – switches it on, points the beam at her face. She is grinning. Piercing dark eyes and carved-out cheekbones. I don't know what it is she's wearing, but it looks like it's made of satin or something. It's too loose. It's all wrong.
“I'm just – you don't have to come down here. I'm just asking you to – to go and get help.”
Lily cocks her head to one side. Frowns, as though confused.
“G-g-g-go and g-g-get someone,” he stutters. “From the house. Tell them there's someone in the dock, tell them to get a rope. Tell them to call the police. Please. I need you.”
The smile is back. Lily sits back on her haunches and tosses her tangles.
“I will – I will die,” he says, “if you don't help me.”
She lets out a sharp laugh. Opens her mouth wide so he can see where she is missing her back teeth.
“I'm cold,” says Lily. And vanishes.
He wants to scream. It's my mind. I've started hallucinating.
“Hello?” he calls.
Silence. Just the sough of the breeze in the eaves.
He can feel his heartbeat slow. Where is she? She can't just…
There's no sound from above. No footsteps, no shifting. He strains to hear, plays his torch over the hole in the ceiling.
Nothing.
There is no way out.
Yes there is, says his failing brain. Those doors: the ones that lead out to the lake. They never go all the way down to the ground, because they'd be too heavy to open if they did. I can swim under. I can swim under and swim out, and… I don't know what I'll do after, but I have to take the first step and get out of here.
He makes his way, slowly, painfully, across the dock. I can barely swim. This leg: it's not working properly. I'll have to crawl when I get out. Crawl across that lawn. That door won't take much more pushing to let me in. I can get inside. She'll have to let me stay. Have to. She can call the filth if she wants. I don't care. She can't leave me out here in the cold.
The door is rough against his hand. He hangs on to the cross-strut and tries to catch his breath. “Hello?” he calls again, hopelessly. And when the cry is answered by silence, he takes a lungful of searing air and dives.
The water is black, viscous. Kieran pulls himself down, down, hand over hand, gropes for the bottom. It seems a long way. It can't be this far. Hand by hand down the cross-strut: the same spongy, leaden feeling to the planks. He punches at the barrier, feels his hand sink through. Rotten. It's rotten like the rest of it.
He lets go. Drifts upward. Breaks surface and gasps at the blessed air.
My God, I'm so cold. This water: it's sucking the heat from me. I can feel it, deep inside now, the black; tentacles spreading out from my stomach, consuming me. I won't stay conscious for much longer. I have to go now.
He hyperventilates, once, twice, drops down on the third. Pressure. Down. Can't come up again. This is my last chance.
He holds the cross-strut, kicks with his good foot. Yes. I can feel it. It's going. It's…
A crack, dulled by the water. Yes. It's gone. I'm there. I can… maybe I should go back. Take another breath.
No. Go now. Go. You can breathe on the other side.
He levers himself down again, launches himself forward at the gap. Takes two swooping strokes with his arms.
Something snags. A belt-loop, a nail; all forward motion halted.
No. Nononono…
Panic. Red, black, all-consuming.
Let me go. Let me go. I'll say I'm sorry. I'll take it all back
Thrashing, in the water, trying to turn round, face the enemy, fight off the imprisoning hand. Godgodgodgod. Mustn't scream. Mustn't waste breath.
He feels the seconds tick by. Feels the air burn in his lungs, his trachea contract. Flails, blindly. Drops the torch as he scrabbles behind him.
The wood gives way. The nail lets go. He's free.
Forward. Now. Forward.
Kieran pushes back with his hands, kicks hard with his good leg. Shoots away from the door. Cups his hands, and pulls.
Reaches the ice on the surface. Thick and hard and inevitable, because the open air is always colder than the air indoors.
Chapter Sixty-one
Yasmin wriggles out of the bundle her mother has made of them, wrapped against the cold in duvet and bedcover. Cold light streams round the curtains, draws her to the window. She no longer feels afraid. Something has shifted in the night, she senses it, and there is nothing more to fear. Her mother has succumbed, sometime in the night, to exhaustion; sleeps on like the dead, her mouth slightly open, head lolling on her shoulder.
She ducks beneath the curtain, climbs up and kneels on the window seat, traces the ice-patterns on the outside of the window with her finger. The clouds have cleared in the night, and the sun shatters the snowy morning into a billion shards of gold. She can see, filled in by fresh snowfall, faint traces of where her father walked down the path to the front door, where he worked his way from window to window round the house's perimeter. Otherwise, the garden is pristine, untouched, as it was when she woke yesterday.
A yew branch shivers, shrugs off its load with a dull whump.
She can feel it. The quietness. Whatever it was, whatever gave them such cause for fear last night, it is over.
It takes a moment, screwing her eyes up against the brightness of the snow, for her to notice Lily, standing by the garden gate. She's got her evening dress on. She smiles, waves.
Quietly, quietly, Yasmin edges the casement open, leans out into air that feels like the beginning of the world.
"Shhh," she whispers. "My mum's asleep."
Lily swishes across the garden, comes to stand below the window.
"I came to say goodbye," she says.
Yas feels a little lurch, the first tiny register of loss.
"Where are you going?"
"Portsmouth," says Lily. "Find my mum. She must be missing me."
"Don't go," says Yasmin.
"It's time," says Lily. "Don't worry. You'll be all right, now."
"But who am I going to talk to?" asks Yasmin.
Lily throws her head back, laughs. "Well not me, that's for bleeding sure."
"But..." says Yasmin.
Lily shakes her head.
"I'm going, now," she says. "I can go, don't you see? I’m allowed, now."
"Oh." says Yasmin. She doesn't have the vocabulary for it. Doesn't know what to say.
"Don't worry," says Lily. "It'll be all right now. He can't hurt you no more. It's over."
"How will
you find your mum?" asks Yasmin. "Portsmouth's a big place."
Lily shrugs. "Dunno. Guess I'll find out when I get there."
"Will you come back? If you can't find her?"
"You have got," says Lily, "to be joking. I ain't coming back here, never."
She feels the prick of tears behind her eyes.
"But what about me?"
"Give it a rest," says Lily. "You've got your mum. I ain't got nothing here now. I've got to go and find out what I do got."
She turns and swishes back to the gate. Passes through it and starts up the hill. She doesn't seem to be hampered by the snow: passes over it as though it were thick white ice. Yasmin leans her elbow on the windowsill, her chin on her hand, and watches her progress. A hundred yards out, Lily stops, turns back and looks at her again.
"Toodle-pip!" she shouts. "Don't do nuffink I wouldn't do!"
When she reaches the top of the hill, disappears over its brow into the grey-white nothingness beyond, Yasmin closes the window. Climbs down and makes her way across the carpet. Tugs at her mother's shoulder.
“Wake up, Mummy,” she says. “Wake up.”
Bridget, deep asleep against her will, starts, tenses, returns instantly to last night's defensive crouch.
“It's all right, Mummy,” says Yasmin. “It's okay.”
She's still half-asleep, eyes barely focusing; casts about her with a gaze half-feral, half-paralysed.
Yasmin kneels and puts her arms round her neck. Holds her there, comforts her, warmth of childish breath in hair. “It's all right, Mummy,” she murmurs again. “We're safe now.”
She feels a hand come up and stroke the back of her hair. Bridget lifts her other arm and looks at her watch. It's past eight o'clock. They've been in here ten hours, waiting, and exhaustion must have overcome her, dragged her down in the small hours into an opiated, dream-filled sleep.
I have lived it over and over. He has come through the door, through the window, through the walls. Larger, darker, stronger than before, face obscured, intent palpable. He has been in here with me, with us – and yet we have survived the night.
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