by Abbie Frost
Lucy gasped and the hammer hit the floor with a thud. Hannah covered her face with a hand.
‘What the fuck?’ Lucy said, pointing up. ‘It’s a strip light, look.’
Above them ran a line of glowing lights, all of which must have been triggered as they opened the door. There was electricity in here.
As Hannah’s eyes adjusted to the glare, she started to take in her surroundings. They were in a sleek, modern space: polished floors, tasteful art on the white walls, a Middle Eastern rug by their feet. It felt like they were in a completely different house.
‘It’s so warm,’ said Hannah. ‘There must be heating.’
Lucy had gone a deathly pale, her eyes flitting around the room, her chest heaving. ‘What’s going on?’ she said. ‘What is this place?’
Hannah said, ‘It looks safe, I think. Maybe it’s where the host, that Henry Laughton – maybe it’s where he stays.’ But Lucy still looked terrified.
They walked around the room, peering into corners, trying to understand what they were seeing. A black-leather sofa sat against one wall, a sound system, and a stack of classical music CDs beside it, mostly Wagner and Bach. Everything spotless and gleaming. The only other piece of furniture was a long steel-topped bench against one white wall. Hannah spotted a few objects lined up neatly on a small metal shelf beside it: a bottle of sanitizing hand gel and a couple of packs of medical-grade antibacterial wipes.
It was like someone had put an industrial-scale kitchen bench in the middle of their living room. ‘Maybe this is where Henry does his restoration work,’ Hannah said hesitantly. There were no windows in here, but the electricity seemed to be working fine, so she switched off her torch to save the battery.
Then she realized Lucy wasn’t standing behind her any more; she was squatting down against the wall for support, head close to her knees.
‘It’s all right.’ Hannah moved over to touch her shoulder. ‘We’re safe here. That sign was probably just to keep people out of a private area. And the lights and heating are working, so we should call Rosa and Chloe, get them to come in here.’
She pulled her phone from her pocket, but there was still no wifi. ‘We might find a router somewhere.’
Lucy just shook her head, her hands clenching and unclenching. ‘I don’t understand. It doesn’t make any sense. Who did this? What happened?’
‘Preserve the Past.’ Hannah spoke gently. ‘Like I said – they must use this bit.’ She took Lucy’s arm and helped her upright. ‘Come on, let’s go.’
Lucy wiped her face blearily and followed Hannah to a white door in the opposite door, so sleek and flat it almost blended in.
‘Let’s try through here,’ Hannah said.
Lucy stopped walking. ‘No, let’s go back. I feel sick, I can’t go any further. I don’t want to go in there. This is all wrong, we need to get out.’
Hannah shook her arm in frustration. ‘For God’s sake, get a grip. There’s nothing to worry about – it’s warm and the lights work. Do you really want to go back out there in the dark and the cold, when there’s a fucking dead body upstairs?’
Their eyes locked and Lucy seemed so fragile and scared that Hannah felt instantly guilty for her outburst.
‘Look, I’m sorry, but I want to keep going. It feels good to be actually doing something. If you want, you can stay here, or go back.’ She pulled Lucy into a hug and then let her go.
Striding over to the white door, Hannah twisted the handle and it immediately opened. Inside was completely dark and when she groped on the wall for a light switch her fingers found only damp brickwork. In the glow from the room behind her she could see a flight of stone steps leading down into shadow.
‘Wait,’ said Lucy. ‘Be careful.’ She grabbed Hannah’s jumper and pulled her backwards. ‘Be careful,’ she said again.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Hannah twisted away.
‘It’s a basement,’ Lucy said. ‘You could have fallen.’
They stared at each other for a moment. ‘How the hell do you know that?’ Hannah kept her voice firm, but she felt a shiver of fear run down her spine. She stepped back. ‘How do you know this is a basement?’
‘It’s obvious.’ Lucy frowned. ‘There’s nothing else it could be.’ She switched on her torch and pointed the beam down the steep flight of stone steps into the dark. ‘Of course it’s a basement. And it’s dangerous, look at it. God knows what’s down there.’
But Hannah wasn’t listening. She was staring into the cellar with the sudden unexplainable conviction that this was where the answers lay. ‘Well, I’m going,’ she said.
And with the torch in her hand and the comforting weight of the hammer in her pocket, she stepped through the door and began to make her way down the stairs. A strange chemical smell came up to meet her. It burned her nostrils like medicine, making her want to retch. As she descended, doubts began to swirl in her mind.
‘It’s freezing,’ Lucy said as she followed Hannah down.
At the bottom, the pale shaft of light from Hannah’s torch illuminated a brick-walled basement, with a rough concrete floor. As the beam played along the walls, she spotted a light switch. And to her surprise, when she clicked it, a single lightbulb sputtered into life in the centre of the ceiling. The glow shone on huge cobwebs draped all around them, grey patches of web massed in corners and across walls.
‘Jesus,’ said Hannah.
A dripping sound echoed around the room. Plip, plip, plip. Her torch picked out a tap attached to the wall in a corner, with a small puddle beneath it. There was something horrible about this place.
‘Let’s go back,’ Lucy whispered.
Hannah told herself to keep going. ‘Just a quick look around, and then we’ll go back.’ She shone her torch to the end of the room, where the light from the bulb hardly penetrated. It looked as if there was an alcove of some kind round the corner. The stink of chemicals seemed to be getting stronger.
‘Can you smell that?’ she asked as they crept forward.
‘What? I can’t smell anything.’ Lucy clung to Hannah’s arm.
Around the corner, they found a long alcove crammed with stuff. One wall covered from floor to ceiling by a wine rack, the rest of the space piled with junk. Hannah’s torch shone over several rough wooden chests and a heap of black bin bags. Then some big plastic crates and brightly coloured storage boxes: the only cheerful-looking things down here.
They picked their way through the junk and Hannah kicked the lid off a box. On the top lay an old blanket, which she shifted aside with her foot. Newspapers, plastic carrier bags, and torn bits of dusty cloth. In the next box she found a stack of food, cheap stuff like baked beans, tomatoes, and rice. They looked old, the cans rusted and peeling, like they had been here for years.
‘Look at this,’ Lucy said. She was standing back the way they had come, pointing at the opposite wall.
‘What is it?’ Brushing her hands against her trousers, Hannah walked closer, her torch raised. The beam picked out the line of metal shelves they had walked past on their way to the alcove. But from this angle, she could see that they had been dragged away from the wall. And behind them was a door.
When Hannah pushed it open, it felt heavy and made a shushing sound, as if a rubber seal lined the frame. As if it had been designed with sound-proofing, or to offer some kind of protection to – or from – whatever was behind it.
As they entered, strip lights flickered on, illuminating an ultra-modern, sterile-looking space lined with office furniture. Desks and tables ranged around the walls, their surfaces covered by computers, a photocopier, and a large printer and scanner.
As Hannah’s eyes adjusted, time seemed to slow down. The room smelled strangely metallic, like something she knew well but couldn’t name. Images came to her in a rush of colour and sound. Above one of the desks ran a series of monitors, their screens showing horribly familiar footage from the house: the gloomy hallway; the fire in the drawing room, the dark figures
of Rosa and Chloe hunched together in front of it.
‘Fuck.’ Hannah thought about the feeling of being watched that had stalked her over the past few days.
Then she saw something else, great red pools covering a desk and dripping down onto the floor. The smell of rotting meat hit her like a wall.
And from a long way away, she could hear Lucy’s voice. ‘Hannah.’ It sounded like someone shouting from the bottom of a swimming pool. ‘Hannah!’
She tried to respond, but nothing came out.
All she could do was gaze at the man slumped back on a chair by one of the desks, his limp hand hanging towards the floor. His dead eyes staring at the ceiling.
It was Liam.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Dark blood pooled around his feet. So much blood. And out of nowhere she understood what the room smelled like – a butcher’s shop.
The world shifted, and she was aware of nothing but a dull ringing sound in her ears. Had someone killed Liam like they killed Rob and Sandeep? Was she next on the list? Eventually the spinning room began to slow, until finally it stopped and she felt warm arms around her. Lucy holding her, muttering words she couldn’t make out.
They were still standing in the middle of the room, just metres away from the horror at the desk. And when she closed her eyes, images of it flashed across her mind, so she forced herself to look at the monitors on the wall above. At the floor, the door to the cellar, the door in the side wall leading to who knew what further nightmares.
As her thudding heart slowed, she managed to break free from Lucy, stand up and take a step closer to Liam, to what had been Liam.
‘We need to … to work out what happened,’ she said.
Lucy swallowed and wiped her nose with a sleeve. ‘He’s dead, that’s what happened. Someone killed him.’
‘But why has he been monitoring the house?’ Hannah pointed to the screens. ‘And why the fuck is he here in the first place? He’s supposed to be staying in town.’
Lucy just shook her head and gazed blankly around at the filing cabinets, at the whole high-tech office. Eventually she got up and sat on one of the office chairs – as far from Liam as possible. She shook her head again. ‘I don’t understand.’
Hannah stepped closer to the body and tried to hold her breath, tried not to inhale the thick rotting smell. Liam’s neck had been slit – hacked open – and blood had gushed out across the floor. A scalpel lay in a pool of blood beside his chair, as if he – or his killer – had dropped it there.
‘Well, it’s either murder or suicide,’ she said, but Lucy didn’t respond.
Peering at the blood that coated Liam’s chair and clothes, Hannah realized it was almost congealed. ‘That – that blood – it doesn’t look fresh. As if he’s been dead for hours. He can’t have been away from the house for long.’
‘Chloe said she saw him outside,’ Lucy said. ‘She must have been right.’
Hannah took a deep breath and walked away from the body to search the rest of the room, looking for anything that would answer all the questions whirling in her mind. She pulled out the hammer from her pocket and left it on a desk at the side of the room. Another metal shelf sat beside the door, sanitizing gel and hand wipes lined up on top. Underneath Hannah found a small metal cupboard and, inside, more of the same: enough to last a clean freak for months. Sandeep would have loved this, she thought grimly. She shut the cupboard door and tried to focus.
Had Liam been in this room the whole time, watching them all on the monitors, working out how to pick them off one by one? Of course he was a doctor, the obsession with cleanliness made sense. And he had a huge ego. But Rosa seemed to know nothing about it. Hannah remembered what Chloe had said about his adultery: could this place have some connection to his secret life?
She moved some wet wipes to the side to get a better look at the back of a shelf. And there, right in the corner of the cupboard, she noticed another, dark-coloured, bottle.
An expensive-looking aftershave, its label oddly familiar. She picked it up and spun it in her fingers.
‘Lucy, check this out.’ She opened the bottle and brought it to her nose.
Lucy stood up and her mouth began to move, forming words, but Hannah heard nothing. Because her mind was shrinking back – back to her childhood – to a place she didn’t want to go.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Twenty-two years ago
Hannah
She’s all snug and cosy in bed with her teddy and her Barbie dolls. Mummy’s just kissed her goodnight and tucked her in. She looks like a princess tonight, her top all sparkly and her shoes all shiny with high, spiky heels.
She’s going out tonight with Sally and Rachel – they’re Mummy’s girlfriends, but Hannah doesn’t like them because they always try to play with her hair. Daddy’s staying home to look after Hannah.
She closes her eyes and holds her teddy very close, doesn’t want to think about the monster that might be under her bed, might come up the stairs. The one that Mummy says doesn’t exist but that she knows is real. Doesn’t want to think about that now, because it’s silly.
But then she hears a sound on the stairs and she squeezes her eyes tight shut. So tight they hurt and hurt and she has to open them for a second, has to let out a breath but only a tiny one. Only a really small one or the monster will hear. If she stays still like this, if she’s really quiet, it might be all right.
But it isn’t all right, and Hannah wants to cry. Because the door opens and the monster is in her room. She smells its smell – the one she likes when it’s daytime – not now, though. Not at night when she’s in bed. At night it smells of monsters.
Its voice is soft and nice, like always. ‘Not asleep yet are you, princess?’
It’s left the door open and she can see light through her eyelids. She opens one just a bit, just a tiny bit, pressing it closed again when she sees the monster’s dark shape move across the window. It’s coming closer, too close, and now it’s sitting on the bed. She can feel the mattress bend. Look how heavy the monster is. Oh no – you’re not real, Mummy says you’re not real – please go away.
But it doesn’t go. It leans over and touches her cheek. She feels her eyelids flutter. Why did she let them do that?
‘Trying to fool me?’ Daddy says. ‘Pretending to be asleep? But my princess doesn’t want to be asleep tonight, does she? Mummy’s out so we can stay up late and have lots of fun.’
Chapter Forty
Hannah opened her eyes and saw a piece of fluff lying on the floor. Her mind readjusted, she started to remember, and then it all flooded back and she knew why she was lying curled up on the floor, just like little Hannah all those years ago. For a moment she was back there, in the warm bedroom that smelled of aftershave. The aftershave she loved and hated; the daddy she loved in the daytime, but hated at night.
‘Hannah … Hannah!’ Lucy’s face loomed above her. ‘Are you all right?’
Hannah managed to nod and drag herself to her feet. Lucy looked deathly pale, her face creased with worry. She pulled over one of the wheeled office chairs and helped Hannah into it.
‘Here, sit down. You’re all right, it’s OK,’ she said. ‘This is messed up, I know, but we have to hold it together for Chloe and Rosa. We have to think of something to say to them.’
She was right, and not just about this, about what Hannah had remembered too. Now wasn’t the time to try to understand what had happened to her when she was a little girl. What she did know was that the dreams she’d had at The Guesthouse were all about that trauma. The dark figure she thought she had seen in her room, the monster sitting on her bed; the horror of her dad’s aftershave. It was all about what her father had done to her – the father who had lived in this very house.
Someday soon there would be a time to talk about it, to tell her mother and find out how much she knew. To tell Lori and make it part of her conscious life, so that it might lose the power to torture her unconscious. But not now.
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‘You’re right,’ Hannah nodded at Lucy. ‘Let’s go and tell them.’ But as she said it she heard footsteps upstairs. And when she looked at one of the monitors, she saw the fire was still flickering in the drawing room, but the hunched figures were gone.
‘Hannah. Lucy. Where are you?’ Rosa shouted down to them.
The footsteps came closer. ‘Hannah?’ Chloe shouted. ‘Lucy, what’s happened? I’m scared.’ They were at the top of those stone steps that led down into the cellar, heading for this room. And what was sitting at the desk.
It was Lucy who acted first, whisking out and closing the door behind her. Hannah went to follow, but her legs felt too weak, her mind too jumbled. She needed to stay where she was, to try to keep them out of this room. For now she could only stand and listen.
‘No, no. The stairs are dangerous,’ Lucy said. ‘And there are rats down there.’ Something inaudible from Rosa.
‘No, seriously, Rosa,’ said Lucy.
Hannah went back into the cellar and shouted up the stairs as loudly as she could: ‘We’re all right, but you shouldn’t come down. There are slippery steps and … it’s dangerous. There’s nothing you can do in here. We’ll find the generator—’
‘Chloe, stop,’ Rosa shouted. ‘Don’t—’ Then a flurry of sound. ‘Wait,’ Rosa called. ‘It’s dangerous.’
Hannah hurried back through the door and stood where she hoped she might block their view of Liam. If nothing else, it might give her a chance to break the news gently.
She heard Rosa say something as they entered the cellar and then the door flew open and she burst in. Lucy was behind her struggling to keep Chloe outside, and when that didn’t work, to shield her from seeing the body.
‘Wait a minute,’ Hannah shouted, her hands raised.
But Rosa pushed her aside and strode into the room. ‘What the hell is going on? Who do you think you are? Trying to keep this secret from us, lying to … to …’ Rosa’s words trailed off and she stood stock still in the centre of the room, staring at Liam.
