The House of Ashes

by Stuart Neville

  Help her, Sara thought. For God’s sake, help her.

  Finally, she moved, went to the hall and the front door. She pulled the lever handle, but it remained solidly in place. Locked, she remembered, and she ran back to the kitchen, to the bowl on the island, and grabbed the keys. Returning to the hall, she unlocked the door and opened it. The old woman was already there, pushing, pushing, stronger than Sara could have imagined, her voice rising as she forced her way inside, past Sara and into the hall. A trail of bloody footprints followed her. The insane idea to get the mop from the kitchen and clean the floor flashed in Sara’s mind.

  The woman turned in a circle, her burning gaze moving from floor to wall to doorway to Sara, her voice a panicked shriek.

  “Who are you?” the woman asked. “Why are you in my house?”

  Sara backed against the wall, her hands up and out, as if to defend herself. “I live here,” she said. “We just moved—”

  “Get out!” The woman bent double with the force of her own voice. “Get out of my house!”

  Sara shook her head. “I don’t—”

  “Where are the children? What did you do with the children?”

  Damien appeared on the stairs, eyes puffy, hair tousled, fastening the belt on his jeans, still wearing the T-shirt he’d slept in. The woman heard his footsteps, turned to stare up at him.

  “What are you doing in my house?” she shouted at him.

  “Oh, Jesus,” he said. He paused for a moment, then rushed down the remaining stairs.

  “Damien,” Sara said, “what’s going—”

  Before she could finish the question, the woman turned back to her.

  “Get out of my house! Get—”

  She fell to the floor like a bundle of twigs. While Sara remained against the wall, her back pressed to it, Damien rushed to the old woman, crouched down beside her. The woman cowered on the stone floor, her hands up to shield herself.

  “You’re all right, love, let’s get you back.” He turned to speak to Sara. “Grab my car key from the kitchen.”

  Sara didn’t move. “We need to call the police.”

  “No police,” he said, his voice hardening. “I’ll take her back. Just get the key, will you?”

  “Take her back where? She’s bleeding. She needs a hospital. We should call—”

  “Just get the fucking key!”

  His anger stirred her into motion, and she knew not to argue any further. She hurried to the kitchen, avoiding the woman’s bloody footprints. When she returned with the key, fat and black in her palm, he snatched it from her and hauled the woman to her feet. The woman cried out as he pushed her towards Sara.

  “Keep a hold of her,” he said as he went to the mat by the front door where his trainers sat beside hers.

  Sara took the woman in her arms, felt her quivering, felt the chill of her skin through the dressing gown.

  “My God, she’s freezing,” Sara said, wrapping her open cardigan around the woman, hoping to share some warmth with her. “She needs to go to hospital.”

  Damien pulled each shoe on, yanking on the toggled cord to fasten them. “The care home can sort that out.”

  Sara felt anger drag her into the moment, time and reality connecting for the first time in months.

  “What care home? Damien, who is she?”

  “It’s not my home,” the woman said. “This is my home. Where are the children? They need me. Where are they?”

  Sara bent down to the woman’s eye level. “What children? What’s your name?”

  Damien took the woman from Sara’s arms, his eyes flashing a warning. She did not drop her gaze.

  “Never mind her name, she’s away in the head. Just get that floor cleaned.”

  As he carried her to the front door, still open, the woman said, “Mary. My name’s Mary, and this is my house.”

  Damien slammed the door behind him.

  Sara looked down at her bare feet and saw she stood in the woman’s blood.

  2: Mary

  Here, now, till I tell you.

  I always lived in the house. I never knew any different. Underneath, in the room down the stairs. In the dark. That’s what I remember the most, when we were telt to put the lamps out. They locked the door at the top of the stairs and that was that. Dark until they opened it again. I still don’t like the dark.

  As far as I know, I was born there. Nobody ever telt me any different, and I don’t mind any different. From I was wee, that’s all I remembered. Always. Thon room under the house, then the rest of the place when I was allowed up.

  The only light down there was the couple of oil lamps they allowed us to have. It was always cold and wet. They’d made a floor out of wooden boards, and a ceiling, with posts to holt it up. The floor was always damp. Sometimes, if it rained hard outside, mucky water would come up through the cracks.

  I don’t mind what age I was the first time they let me up the stairs by my own self. Five, maybe, or six. Old enough that I could do a lock of wee things about the place. Sweeping up the floors or dunging out the ashes from the fireplaces. Mummy Noreen telt me what to do. Says she, when the Daddies is around, you don’t look at them, just you get on with your work. Just you pretend you aren’t there, and they’ll not bother with you. Unless they do bother with you, then you be polite and don’t give them any cheek.

  So that’s what I did. I just bate on with what I had to do, and if Daddy George or Daddy Ivan came in, I just put my head down and said nothing. And that wasn’t hard to do, either. I was wild afeart of them. They weren’t slow about giving beatings, them boys. Many’s a time Mummy Noreen or Mummy Joy would have a black eye or a sore back from a kicking.

  Daddy Tam was the worst of them. He was a cribb’d auld skitter, so he was. He’d slap you soon as look at you. And them big hands of his. If he hit you, you knew you were hit.

  I mind the first time he hit me. I’d finished sweeping up the ashes around the hearth in the living room. It was the wintertime because it would’ve foundered you in the house, but I remember the sun was out, and it was shining between the bare branches of the trees outside, and through the windows. Mummy Joy had just cleaned them, and you’d hardly know the glass was there she’d cleaned them that well. And I was there in the room all by myself and the sun was shining in and it felt warm on my arms, so here, didn’t I start dancing? I don’t know what notion I took, but I started twirling around like I don’t know what. Just spinning around and tittering away.

  Then something slammed into my head, bang, and I didn’t know what it was. I thought the roof had fallen on me. Then here’s me on the floor, didn’t know what way up I was, and Daddy Tam’s standing over me.

  Says he, What do you think you’re at?

  I was that afeart I couldn’t answer him. I just stared up at him. Then he kicked me in the backside, awful hard, I’d never felt the like of it. I’d been hurt before, I’d had the odd wee bump or scrape, but no one had ever hurt me before. Not like that.

  I don’t mind too well, but I suppose I must’ve cried or screamed because Mummy Joy came running in and she got down beside me, between me and Daddy Tam, and says she, Get you away from her.

  No one ever talked back to Daddy Tam. Never, never, never. I could see the anger in him. He was always angry, that man, they all were, but this was not the same. He was raging so much he went all quiet. And pale, except for the red blotches on his cheeks. I remember his big hands opening and closing. I remember feeling Mummy Joy starting to shake.

  Then he points at me, and says he, Get thon child out of my sight, then you get back up here.

  Mummy Joy didn’t argue with him. She picked me up and she carried me out into the hall, then into the kitchen, and through the door and down the stairs. She put me on the wee bed I had in the corner and put a blanket around me.

  I suppose I must’ve been
crying, and Mummy Joy was too, and says I, Don’t go up there, but says she, I have to, and away she went. She left me holding one of the wee dollies I’d made from tying sticks together with twine, the ones I kept hidden under my mattress so Daddy Ivan wouldn’t take them from me.

  I heard all of it, Daddy Tam shouting and raging, the banging and the thumping, her screaming. It sounded like he was dragging her across the floor, back into the kitchen, and the way she was squealing, I suppose he must’ve been dragging her by the hair. Then I heard Daddy George telling him to quit it, he was going to kill her if he kept on.

  So what if I do, says he.

  Then I’ll kill you, says Daddy George.

  Then them two went at it. Mummy Joy closed the door behind her and came down the stairs in the dark. She found her way to me and got into the bed and we cuddled up in the dark, under the blanket. All the time, from upstairs, banging and thumping and shouting. Then we heard Daddy Ivan come along and that was the end of it. As afeart as I was of Daddy Tam, him and Daddy George were more afeart of Daddy Ivan.

  A wee while later, I don’t mind how long, Mummy Noreen came down and she lit the lamps and said we should stay down there for the rest of the day, just till things calm down. Things is bad, says she. Daddy Tam’s thran, he’s in a terrible twist, and he’s on the drink again. Don’t show yourself, either of yous, not till tomorrow, not till he’s sobered up.

  What age was I then? I don’t know. Six, maybe. I never had a great notion what age I was. Tell you the God’s honest truth, I don’t know what age I am now.

  But that was our days and nights. Up early in the morning, up into the house, cleaning and tidying, Mummy Noreen sometimes doing the cooking for the Daddies, other times Mummy Joy. Then downstairs in the evening to ate whatever leftovers there was. Whoever did the cooking always made sure there was just enough. Then when it was time to go to sleep, one of the Daddies would call down to us to put the lamps out, and he’d close the door and lock us in for the night.

  It was always like that. Sure, I never knew any different.

  3: Sara

  Sara was cleaning the hall floor with the mop and bucket she’d fetched from the basement when Francie arrived, letting himself in. He stood in the doorway for a moment, studying her. It wasn’t the first time he’d looked at her that way, his gaze travelling over her, pausing where it shouldn’t. She pulled her cardigan tight around herself with her one free hand.

  “Not dressed yet?” he said.

  “I haven’t had the chance,” she said, wondering what the time was. It couldn’t be much past seven fifteen, and yet here he was, letting himself into her house.

  Her house?

  An uncomfortable thought flickered at the edge of her mind. She ignored it.

  “Any danger of a cup of tea?” Francie asked.

  His voice was deep and rasping, roughened by a lifetime of shouting at other men. Sara knew a little of his past, including the six years he’d spent in the Maze prison before getting an early release as part of the Good Friday Agreement. A builder by trade, he’d established his property development business not long after getting out, and it had flourished in the twenty years since. Damien had never told her what offence his father had been sent away for, only that he had been wrongly convicted. When she looked his name up on Google, archived news stories said it had been for possession of explosives. He was not a tall man, but he was wide at the shoulders, and the belly, and he seemed to take up the entire hall. Standing with his hands in his pockets, he ran his gaze over the boxes stacked against the wall.

  “Let me just finish up with this,” Sara said.

  “Sure, I’ll get it myself,” he said.

  He stepped past her into the kitchen, and she listened to him hum and whistle to himself while he filled the kettle. The water in the bucket had grown dim and murky, but the floor was now clear of blood. Yet she felt it lingering on her soles, warm and slick, as if it was her own.

  Her own.

  Sara became aware of the air around her, the pressure and weight of it, and the bar of sunlight that cut through the glass panel in the door to fall on her skin. The heat of it. She inhaled, her lungs filling, and reached out a hand to steady herself against the wall. Her heart rate accelerated and she felt her pulse in her throat, resonating up through her head.

  She recognised this sensation, the alignment of time and reality. It had come upon her once before, and she had drowned it with sleeping pills.

  “You all right?”

  Francie’s voice startled her. He stood in the kitchen doorway, watching her.

  She had to force the words out of her mouth.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “A bit dizzy, that’s all.”

  Francie grunted, nodded, and returned to the kitchen.

  Sara inhaled through her nose, exhaled through her mouth, deep breaths until her heart rate slowed. Balance restored, she brought the bucket and mop to the small bathroom off the back hall and emptied the dirty water into the toilet. When she returned to the kitchen, Francie sat on one of the stools at the island, nursing his mug of tea. He hadn’t made one for her.

  “I’m fine,” Sara said again, without being asked.

  Francie looked at her over his steaming tea. “Mm-hm.”

  “Did Damien call you?” she asked.

  “Aye,” he said. “Crazy woman.”

  Sara stood at the far end of the island, blocking his view of the window. “She said this was her house.”

  “Mm-hm?” he said.

  “Was it?”

  His shoulders slumped as if he were dealing with a child who had asked one question too many. “She started a fire. Lucky to get out alive. The local health trust ruled she wasn’t fit to look after herself. She was put in that care home on the other side of Morganstown. The house had to be sold to pay for it.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us that?”

  “I told Damien.”

  “He didn’t tell me.”

  Francie set down his tea. “Look, don’t you worry about it. Happens all the time, people losing their homes like that. If I hadn’t bought this house, someone else would’ve. Worse than that, another developer probably would’ve took a bulldozer to the place and put up a dozen three- and four-bedroom houses. Isn’t it better it was left standing so a family could make a home of it?”

  “I’d just like to have been told, that’s all,” she said.

  “I told Damien,” he repeated.

  “She kept talking about children. She asked where they were.”

  “She didn’t have any children, unless you count all the cats she had about the place. Maybe that’s what she meant. God knows how many of the bloody things she had. Look, she’s just a crazy old woman. Don’t worry yourself about it.”

  Before she could argue, she heard her husband’s car outside, tyres crunching on the loose stone. She turned to the window over the sink and saw his BMW pull up alongside his father’s Range Rover. Sara’s first thought was of the floor in the hall, was it clean enough? Damien was particular about such things. She watched through the open kitchen door as he entered, examining the floor as he wiped his feet on the mat. He appeared to be satisfied, and she felt a quiet relief.

  As he came into the kitchen, Damien noted the tea in front of his father. “Any for me?” he asked.

  “I got it myself,” Francie said.

  “You made him get his own tea?” Damien asked, his eyes hard on Sara.

  “Well, she was busy,” Francie said.

  The need to know about the woman defeated the need to defend herself, and the fear of doing so.

  “You told me to clean the floor,” she said, her fingers twining together. She forced them apart. “Why did that woman come here? What did she want?”

  “You could’ve stopped to make him a cup of tea,” Damien said, ignoring her question.
r />   “Why was she here?”

  He became still, his gaze fixed on her. Francie kept his attention on his tea.

  “We’ll talk about it later,” Damien said. He spoke to his father. “You wanted to look at the extension?

  “Aye,” Francie said, easing himself off the stool. “Come on, we’ll do it now.”

  Damien followed his father into the back hall, out into the shell of the new wing that had been added to the house, the structure eventually turning it from a three- to a six-bedroom dwelling, along with two more receptions. When the plans were being drawn up, Sara had asked about a space for herself, perhaps a room with good light where she could paint, a passion she had allowed to drift away since before they married. We’ll see, Damien had said.

  She went to the island, lifted the mug Francie had left there, and brought it to the sink. As the tea swirled around the plughole, the idea flashed in her mind to smash the mug into the enamel. How satisfying it would be to hear it shatter, to watch the fragments fly. Then she imagined having to explain it to her husband, and the idea drained away like the drink she had just poured out.

  Damien and Francie would be a while, she knew, examining the work on the extension, taking stock of what had been done and what needed doing. Time to have a shower, get dressed. She climbed the stairs to the small bedroom she and her husband shared. Once the extension was completed, they would move into a new room with an en suite and a walk-in wardrobe. For now, they made do.

  Her phone sat on the wireless charging dock by the bed. She lifted it and checked for messages, even though she knew there would be none. Hadn’t been for months. Not since before she had taken those pills. Damien had asked her friends, the few she’d had left, to give her some space. He had told her so after she had regained consciousness on the emergency ward. They were no good for her anyway, he’d said. Poisoning her mind with their gossip. They were jealous, he’d said, envying what she and Damien had together. They’d ruin things if she let them. Better to keep them at a distance, just for now. Just until things were more settled.