The House of Ashes

by Stuart Neville

  “What for?” he asked. “You didn’t do anything. I’m sorry. Like I said, I’ve no business talking about your father-in-law. I should finish up my work.”

  He turned to leave once more, but Sara’s question would not wait.

  “What about Damien?”

  Tony stopped and turned back to face her. “Don’t ask me that,” he said.

  “Is he like his father?”

  Tony’s eyes grew distant, staring somewhere miles beyond the walls of the kitchen.

  “I went to school with him. We all knew who he was, who his father was. We were all afraid of him. You know, before the cancer got him, my da told me if you grow up to be a better man than your father, then you’ve done all right. Damien isn’t a better man than his father.”

  A heavy blanket of silence hung between them for a moment before she said, “Thank you.”

  “S’all right,” he said. “I’ve said too much. I trust you to keep it between us.”

  “Of course,” she said, meaning it.

  Tony reached into his back pocket and produced a worn and tattered wallet. He took a business card from its folds, placed it on the worktop.

  “If you ever need anything,” he said. “Doesn’t matter what time it is.”

  “Thank you.” She took the card and slipped it into her pocket.

  He bowed his head like a footman and turned away.

  Sara watched him go, wishing he wouldn’t.

  26: Mary

  I got terrible sick. That night, I was awful cold, I couldn’t stop shivering. Mummy Joy dried me out and wrapped me up in all the blankets we had, but the cold had got down deep inside of me. The guts of me was cold, I could feel the chill in my heart. I shook and trimbled till I thought my bones would come loose and I’d fall apart. And the coughing, terrible coughing, like something was clawing and tearing the lungs out of me. After a while, I went to sleep, but it wasn’t like any other sleep I’d ever had. Like when dreams fill your head. This wasn’t the same. With this sleep, the real world was inside my head, and the dreams were outside of me, all around.

  Bad dreams.

  There was pillars of fire. I saw them devour everything and everybody. I felt the heat of them, burning the flesh off my bones. They ate Mummy Joy and Mummy Noreen, turned them to ashes. I mind screaming, soul afeart they would eat me too.

  I saw Esther in the fire. The flames didn’t touch her. They couldn’t. She walked straight through them and she didn’t burn. Maybe it was because she was dripping wet from the water. I saw red ribbons in her hands, and she was holding them to her belly. She was lost, I could tell. Just wandering, wild afeart. I called out to her, and she turned her head to me, but she couldn’t see me.

  She wasn’t all alone there. There was others. Children, I don’t know how many. All ages. I could see them and they could see me. Sometimes they came close, other times they stayed away. But they were always there. They were always, always watching.

  I don’t mind much about them lock of days, when I had the fever, but when I came out the other side, the children were still there. They had followed me out.

  27: Joy

  Joy Turkington watched as Mary sank into the fever, a bundle of skinny arms and legs and sweat and fire. It had started as shivers, coming in waves, as if an angry sea raged through the child. Then the coughing, deep and hacking, and Joy wondered how the force of them didn’t break wee Mary open. When Mary’s eyes darkened and narrowed, Joy touched her forehead, and her hand recoiled from the heat.

  “My God,” she said, “she’s burning.”

  Noreen came to her side and placed the palm of her good hand, the one whose fingers weren’t broken, on Mary’s skin. First her head, then down beneath the nightdress they’d changed her into, feeling her chest. She said nothing, but Joy could see it on her face.

  “What is it?” Joy asked.

  “I don’t know,” Noreen said, “but we need to get her cooled down.”

  She and Joy pulled the bedclothes aside, then Mary’s nightdress. Noreen fetched the washbowl and soaked a rag in water from the jug. She pressed it against Mary’s forehead, her cheeks, her chest, her belly, leaving droplets to glisten in the lamplight.

  Fear took hold of Joy, a different kind of fear, one that coiled around her stomach, tightening like a serpent.

  “Will she die?” she asked.

  “No,” Noreen said. “No, she bloody won’t.”

  She was a hard one, Noreen, always had been, but she had kept Joy alive all these years. Twice she had stopped her ending it. Once when she found Joy with a bed sheet looped around her neck, ready to jump from the upstairs landing. She had grabbed her, held her, fought her, until Joy gave up trying. The second time, Joy had been stabbing at her own wrist trying to find the vein. Noreen had entered the room at the moment Joy brought the blade to her throat and she seized her wrist, pulled it away, slammed her hand against the edge of the sink until the knife fell in among the dishes and the blood.

  Noreen Weaver possessed a fierce will to live, a stubborn, spiteful drive to outlast the men who had held them in this house for more than a decade. She had outlived the third woman who had been here when Joy had first arrived, and four of the five children who had been born here in that time, and now this girl from the outside. Joy would have been dead these many years if not for Noreen. Sometimes, in the cold and wakeful hours of the night, Joy hated her for it.

  They each kept watch as Mary’s fever deepened, as her coughing grew more ragged, as the tremors spread out from her centre to her fingers and toes, her teeth chattering. Noreen said she wouldn’t die, but Joy didn’t believe her. She had said Matthew wouldn’t die, no bloody way would he die, and yet he had perished in Noreen’s embrace, like a candle flame blown out. A real live boy one moment, an armful of rags and skin the next.

  Noreen had cried hard for Matthew, and Joy had too, and Joy had done Noreen’s share of the work for a few days, just as Noreen had done for Joy when her last baby had died still tethered to her, still slick with her blood.

  As the first promises of daylight showed in the gaps around the door at the top of the stairs, Mary began to scream. Awful screams, like the howling of the damned. Joy pressed her hands to her ears, but Mary’s voice cut through, a blade piercing Joy’s skull. Stop, stop, stop, she whispered to herself, feeling the spreading cracks in her mind.

  Noreen took hold of her wrists, pulled her hands away from her ears.

  “We have to get help,” she said.

  “They won’t help her,” Joy said. “They’ll let her die.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Noreen said, getting to her feet.

  She climbed the stairs to the door and hammered it so hard with her fist that it rattled and shook in its frame. The noise seemed to free Mary from whatever torment held her, and she fell silent, staring up at Noreen with wild eyes.

  “Mary,” Joy said.

  “The children,” Mary said, then her eyelids fluttered and closed.

  Noreen slammed her fist against the door again, over and over, and shouted, “Hey! Hey! Hey!”

  Soon, a hammering came from the other side.

  “Whisht, now, quit that.”

  Ivan’s voice, firm and scolding, but not angry. Not yet.

  “The child’s sick,” Noreen said. “She needs help.”

  A pause, then, “Go on back from the door.”

  Noreen descended the steps, halted near the bottom. The padlock rattled, the bolt clattered, and the door opened inward. Ivan stood there, blocking the light, his braces slung over his undershirt, his belly spilling over the top of his trousers. He peered down into the cellar at Mary’s wretched form.

  “Hm,” he said. “You two, go on into the corner and don’t move from it till I tell you.”

  Joy did as she was told, backing into the corner as far as she could, arms w
rapped around herself. Noreen followed, keeping her eyes on Ivan as he came down the stairs.

  “She needs medicine,” Noreen said.

  “Whisht, now.”

  He approached Mary’s bed. She stared up at him, unseeing, her breath coming in quick, shallow rasps. He reached down and placed his palm against her forehead, then her neck, her chest.

  “Hm,” he said, then turned back towards the stairs.

  “You have medicine for the cattle,” Noreen said. “You can give her some of that. She’ll die if you don’t.”

  Ivan didn’t pause as he mounted the stairs, offered no reply.

  Joy spoke, her voice cracking. “If she dies, I die.”

  He climbed up to the door, stepped through, and locked it behind him.

  Joy lay on the bed next to Mary, thinking of ways to die. All she needed was a bed sheet and something to tie it to. The method wasn’t the problem. The problem was Noreen, and her bloody stubborn will. Noreen would not let her go, she knew that. So, if Mary died, Joy would have to seek out a quiet place where she could not be saved.

  A thought entered her mind, an idea that had appeared there before, always fleeting, always chased away for the wicked thing it was. But now it lingered, black and foul. Joy moved her hand to Mary’s throat, felt the heat and the sweat, felt the quickened pulse. All she had to do was squeeze; the child was so weak, there’d be no fight in her. Just a little pressure, just for a wee while. Then it would be over for her, and Joy could pull the sweat-soaked sheet from the bed and tie the knot that would take her away from this place. Let Noreen try and stop her. Just let her try.

  Joy did not squeeze, though the idea remained like a poisoned wound. She buried her face between Mary’s shoulder and cheek, and she wept, grieving for them both.

  She didn’t know Tam stood over her until he spoke.

  “Get away till I get a look at her,” he said.

  He smelled of drink. It tainted the air around them. She kept her gaze away from him as she slid off the bed and went to the corner where Noreen already stood. Noreen took her hand, pressed Joy’s fingers between hers. Joy wiped tears from her cheeks with the back of her free hand, sniffed, and exhaled, the air fluttering from her chest.

  Tam came to Mary’s side and touched her forehead. He leaned down, one hand on the thin mattress, and turned her face towards his. With his thick fingers, he prised open one eye, then the other, peering into them, his tongue clicking behind his teeth. Finally, he stood upright and shoved his hands down into his pockets. He didn’t look at them as he spoke.

  “Pneumonia, I’d say.”

  “Give her medicine,” Noreen said. “She’ll die if you don’t.”

  “She’ll probably die if I do,” he said. “Maybe the best thing for her.”

  Those words cut Joy deep, even as she remembered her hand at the girl’s throat, the wicked idea taunting her.

  “No,” Joy said, her voice welling deep in her throat. “She has to live. Give her the medicine. Let her live. Please.”

  His shoulders rose and fell once as he breathed in and out, an impatient breath, weary.

  “Whether she lives or dies is nothing to do with me. If it was, I’d get it over with. No point making a cratur suffer, whether it’s got two legs or four.”

  Joy went to speak, to curse him, to call him the foulest names she knew, but Noreen squeezed her hand, hissed through her teeth. Ivan might have forgiven her curses, but Tam would not. Tam would beat the life from her where she stood. He might do them all, the three of them, kill them stone dead and put them in the ground with Esther and the policeman.

  And would that be so bad? All she had to do was scream at him, call him the fucking bastard that he was, and wait for his hard right hand.

  Noreen knew her thoughts and grabbed her wrist, squeezed so hard the pain cut through to her right mind. Joy looked down at the sodden wood floor, clenched her teeth together hard enough to bring an ache to her jaw, hard enough to cause the blood to thrum in her ears and pulse behind her eyes.

  “She’ll hardly make it through the night,” Tam said, as if it were a blessing, then he went to the stairs, climbed and locked the door behind him.

  Joy felt her legs melt away and Noreen’s arms around her, guiding her to the bed while she whispered about prayer and the mercy of Jesus.

  28: Sara

  Sara watched through the window as Tony’s van exited onto the lane. She paused there for a moment, looking at the empty space left behind. Then she went through the back hall to the extension. The walls were freshly plastered, windows and patio doors glazed, but the floor was bare concrete. Materials and tools lay scattered about, ready for the underfloor heating to be installed and covered with tiles that were being shipped from Italy. Sara picked her way through lengths of piping, bags of some kind of cement, careful of her footing. The ground floor was open plan, an expansive reception room with a central open fireplace that would create a border between the living and dining areas, with a staircase at the far end. Above, a gallery landing provided access to what would be the master and two spare bedrooms. Through the patio doors, she could see the yard, its stretch of stony earth waiting to be landscaped.

  Sara made her way to the centre of what would some day be the dining area and looked down at the concrete. Smooth and fresh, it had been laid just days before they arrived. And what lay beneath? What had they found here? Whatever it was, had they left it in place or taken it away? She imagined packed earth and stone, and children, trapped there, looking up, reaching for the light.

  I know how they feel, she thought.

  Her life, her marriage, bound so tight around her that she couldn’t move. She thought of Amanda, and the warning she had given, and Sara wished for that time back, so that she could listen. What if instead of taking those pills, she had simply walked through the door, called Amanda, and asked for shelter? Where would she be now?

  Not here, not hundreds of miles from the people she had once called friends. A clean break, Damien had said, a new start. Away from all the pressures of her job and the malevolent influence of Amanda and the others. I want to keep you safe, he’d said on her first night home from the hospital, his chest against her back, his lips on her neck. His words so soft, soothing the burn of shame she felt for taking those pills. But she understood what he really wanted now. The distance he’d placed between her and everyone she had once cared for, and those who had cared for her.

  A wash of loneliness came in, the crushing weight of it almost pushing her to the floor. She turned away from it, blocked it out. It would do her no good. Isolation was his weapon and she would not use it against herself.

  Outside, the light dimmed, heavy raindrops smacking the glass. Sara shivered as the temperature dropped, and she no longer wanted to be in this room. She returned through the back hall and stepped one foot into the kitchen, freezing in the shadow of the doorway.

  Damien stood at the island, shrugging off his rain-damped jacket as he studied the stack of old newspapers on the island’s worktop. He lifted the one on top, a Belfast Telegraph, and read the headlines. A sigh escaped him as he slumped against the island.

  “Fuck’s sake,” he whispered, loud enough for her to hear. He read the piece, his forefinger tracing the words, his breath deepening with his anger.

  Sara cursed herself for not hiding them away. She remained locked in place, unable to move for fear of alerting him to her presence but knowing that she must. She went to speak, her inhalation giving her away. His gaze shot from the page to her. He stared, unmoving, unreadable. She breathed out but no words followed.

  When she could stand the silence no longer, she said, “You’re home.”

  Stupid, stupid words, her tongue betraying her guilt.

  Guilt? What for? She had done nothing wrong, had she?

  “Yeah,” he said, a smile splitting his face, an ill fit that
went no further than his lips. “I finished up early.” He looked down at the newspaper. “What’s this?”

  With terrible effort, Sara took another step into the kitchen. “I was just reading up about the house.”

  “Where’d you get these?” he asked.

  Sara scrambled for a lie but could find nothing. As one part of her mind searched, another part told her the longer she stood in silence, the worse it would be. She had no choice but to tell the truth.

  “Tony brought them,” she said, as if it didn’t matter at all.

  “The spark?”

  “Yes. He told me his grandfather collected old newspapers, they were still in his mother’s attic. So he dug these out. You can ask him.”

  Damien cracked a joyless smile and said, “Don’t you worry, I’ll ask him all right. And what exactly did you find out from these?”

  Sara took another step closer. “About the family,” she said. “Not a family, exactly, but there were three men and two women, and Mary, she was just a little girl when—”

  “When one of the men lost his head and killed everyone then himself,” Damien said. “That’s what you found out.”

  “I don’t know if it was as simple as that, no one really—”

  “It’s history,” he said. “Sixty years ago. What are you dredging all this up for? What good could it do you? Why do you think this place was so cheap? They died. That’s the end of it.”

  “They died,” Sara said, her anger rising in spite of her fear. “That’s right. All but one of them died in this room. How am I supposed to feel about that?”

  “You don’t have to feel a single fucking thing about it.” His eyes flashed, his teeth bared. “You didn’t know them. They weren’t your family. What difference does it make to you how they died, what room it was in? It’s gone, it’s in the past.”

  “Mary isn’t,” Sara said, already fearing his response. “They were her family. She thinks this is still her home.”

  Damien came so close she had to lean back. His words dotted her face with spittle.