In Spite: A terrifying psychological thriller with a shocking twist you won't see coming

by Collette Heather

  If, on the off-chance, Shane were to ask me why I should trawl all the way upstairs instead of using the nearest toilet, I would reply that my favourite hand soaps are upstairs… I hope he doesn’t ask, because I’ll sound like a fool, but God, I know what I heard when I was in the hallway. It was the unmistakable sound of floorboards creaking – the feet-on-floorboards kind of creaking. That, coupled with the fact the front door had been unlocked, has sent me into a tailspin of paranoia.

  I know I’m being quite ridiculous, yet here I am just the same, creeping up the stairs like a burglar in my own home.

  It is dark in the upstairs hallway, and the long, wide space stretches out before me like something out of a horror film, partly because the wind and the rain are even louder up here. This doesn’t make much sense, because the hallway is devoid of windows and therefore relatively soundproofed, with entire rooms separating it from the outside world.

  I stare at the final set of stairs at the end of the hallway, which lead up to the half-converted attic. We currently use that space as storage – what items can be shoehorned up that narrow flight of steps, anyway. These stairs are exceedingly narrow and steep, curving to the right after only the first few steps, up into the waiting blackness beyond.

  I reach out for the light switch on the wall to my left, but nothing happens. I try again; Click, clack. Up, down.

  Nothing.

  Just as it had been down in the living room when it was illuminated by candlelight alone, so the hallway is also rendered unfamiliar by the lack of overhead lighting. It is as if the dimensions themselves have altered – walls pushed back in places, forwards in others. It looks longer as well, and I blink, hard, not at all happy with this sudden onslaught of optical illusions.

  The bedroom door seems so far away. I find that I don’t want to step into the darkness, that I am scared to.

  I should go back down, use the downstairs bathroom. Tell Shane that all three of the overhead lights in the hallway have blown. Because I sure as hell have no intention of mounting a stepladder and screwing in the spare bulbs myself.

  But I’m here now. I will use the upstairs bathroom.

  As soon as I take a step down the hallway, the floorboards creak noisily under my feet and I stop dead, heart pounding. I don’t feel right at all. This doesn’t feel right.

  I am staring down at my be-socked feet, thinking about the noise I had heard down in the hallway, which is exactly like the noise I am making now. As in, the full weight of a person, bearing down upon a floorboard…

  Yes, I am thinking this when I sense – rather than see – movement, dancing in the upper edges of my vision, at the very end of the hallway.

  My head snaps upwards, a low moan escaping my lips and I shudder, a chilly dread washing over me. I strain my eyes in the gloom, staring at the spot where I have just seen movement, like a figure darting in the shadows, into the partially opened door of the fourth and final bedroom, which also serves as Shane’s office.

  I am seeing things, of course. I know full well that I am. It hasn’t been a fully conscious thought up until now, but there it is, in all its glory: Alice is in the house.

  There. I thought it. I went there. I am officially insane.

  Which I am, aren’t I? I remind myself. I have had a spell in a mental asylum, when all is said and done. Just because I was self-admitted, it doesn’t make it any less of ‘a thing’.

  But mad or not, I have to take a peek inside Shane’s office.

  Physically shaking to such an extent that I can barely walk the length of the hallway without collapsing to the ground, I approach the door of the final bedroom.

  I reach around the door to fumble for the switch, and to my relief, the room floods with beautiful light. I could kiss the ceiling’s spotlights, I honestly could.

  It is obvious that there is no one in here, but I stand there in the doorway just the same, drinking in the familiarity of the surroundings. I take in the single bed, topped with the plain, turquoise duvet cover in the modestly-sized room. Then I gaze at the old, decoratively-carved, dark-wood wardrobe, which is completely at odds with Shane’s desk, built into a corner of the room. The desk looks expensive – which it is – all sleek lines, clean beechwood, and inbuilt drawers. It is filled with his paperwork for the business.

  I always tell him that he should get a stationary computer for his little corner unit, just because. But he always laughs and says he won’t because it isn’t the year two thousand and one anymore.

  Are you fucking around, Shane? I think in a wave of desolation. I mean, are you really?

  My gaze falls upon the line of drawers beneath the desk, and I wrestle with the urge to start rootling through them. Good sense wins out, because I would never be able to explain that one away. It’s not that I haven’t looked – I did very recently, in fact. I doubt that their contents have changed all that much in the last few days. Just some tax documents, sketches, and various bits and bobs pertaining to his business.

  No. I have to stop this. I’m going to drive myself crazy.

  With a heavy sigh, I flick the switch and step backwards out of the room, pulling the door to behind me.

  Just as I turn to head back down the hallway I pause, my gaze latching onto the narrow stairs that lead up to the attic. Maybe the stairs are where I saw movement, rather than by the bedroom door...

  No. I am not going up there.

  What on earth would Shane think, if he knew I was crunching around in the attic? How would I explain away that one?

  Finally, I make my way to the bathroom.

  *

  Urinating upstairs had been slightly uncomfortable, with a dull, heavy ache accompanying the passing of wee. I hadn’t thought too much of it, and had just put it down to too much liquid sloshing around in my lower abdomen, thanks to the combination of soup and wine.

  But now, as Shane pins me to the sofa with the full weight of his body, one strong, jean-clad thigh jammed between my legs, and the back of my head wedged awkwardly between the back of the sofa and the armrest, my guts are clenching in earnest.

  Another stab of pain has me moaning into his mouth, a sound Shane clearly seems to take as a moan of pleasure and an invitation to kiss me all the harder. My neck is twisted at a bad angle, wrenched sideways and backwards in a deeply uncomfortable position and the increased pressure of Shane’s kiss has tipped the discomfort over into unbearable.

  I moan louder, but he’s still not getting it. I can’t take anymore – it feels as if my neck is about to snap, and my stomach is twisting into a tight, angry knot.

  A good hard shove against his chest, and he finally seems to get it. The weight of his body lifts.

  Clutching my sore neck, I lurch upright on the sofa, my other arm wrapping around my pained middle. I can smell Shane on my upper lip – a strong, musky, male aroma that makes me feel slightly nauseous.

  With a noisy sigh, Shane moves away from me, as if pointedly leaving a cushion’s width between us to punish me for my rejection of him.

  As far as punishments go, it isn’t much of one.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks, pushing his lightly-greying, dark hair off his forehead – the whole lot has drifted forward with the strength of his ardour.

  “I’m sorry. I have the worst gut ache.”

  I stretch out for my wineglass, taking a large gulp to wash away the taste of Shane, then discretely wipe my mouth to dislodge the film of muskiness clinging to my upper lip. It doesn’t have much effect, and I feel myself grimacing.

  “Right,” he says.

  He leans back against the sofa, doing that weird, groaning stretching thing he sometimes does that tends to really annoy me. He does this either when he has a bad back, is exhausted, or just when he’s feeling agitated by something – or someone. It’s like, he grows suddenly irritated by his own skin, his own body. This stretch usually precedes a whole lot of sleeve rolling and arm rubbing. Sure enough, up come the shirt sleeves and the palm of one hand rubs again
st the thick, coarse hairs of the other forearm. The horrible, rasping noise, like sandpaper against wood, sets my teeth on edge. I hope he doesn’t start rolling up his jeans and attaching his hairy shins as he is also wont to sometimes do.

  “I’m sorry. I have full-on cramps,” I say.

  “I know, I’m a terrible cook.”

  But he says it with no humour and more than a trace of petulance, his expression blank. I have offended him. He thinks I’m making excuses to get out of sex.

  The mood is ruined and I get to my feet.

  “Where are you going?” he asks in that same, blank way, like he doesn’t care, even if I know he does; I’ve dented his ego, that’s all.

  Scratch, scratch, goes his hand against his arm, and the dull, heavy ache in my stomach intensifies.

  “I might take a shower, see if that helps.”

  Because sometimes it does. When I have period pains, the hot spray of water placed directly over my abdomen goes a long way to easing the cramps. But I don’t have my period, even if these cramps do feel like the menstrual cycle straight from Hell. This pain therefore feels like the early stages of food poisoning. In light of this, a hot shower to ease the cramps, and close proximity to a toilet strikes me as entirely wise.

  “Sure,” he says. “Are you coming back down again?”

  “Yes,” I say, even though I truly don’t fancy it.

  But, if nothing else, I might want to grab a glass of lemonade to take to bed with me, as sipping flat lemonade is the nicest thing I’ve found to drink when my guts are in turmoil like this.

  “Oh, and Tess?” Shane calls to me from the sofa when I have reached the door.

  “Yes?”

  I spin around on the spot, my gaze falling upon him in the candle-lit room. The flickering shadows dance over his face, distorting his features, effectively turning him into a stranger.

  “Don’t be too long,” he tells me.

  From this distance, his eyes are two shadowy pits – two empty eye sockets like those of a skeleton’s. If I didn’t know better, I would’ve said that there was something faintly threatening behind his words.

  I go to take my shower.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  ALICE

  Tess almost caught me when she came upstairs. I don’t know why she didn’t think to check the attic. She checked the spare room, but not up here.

  For a fleeting second, I had thought that she had seen me. I mean, I had been so sure that she was looking right at me, which is why I ran up into the attic like a scurrying, frightened mouse. I had no intention of coming up here otherwise, but as she had very nearly caught me snooping around, I had little choice in the matter. I had intended staying in their bedroom and waiting for them to go to bed. I was going to hide in their nice, big wardrobe…

  I still will, as soon as the coast is clear.

  I smirk to myself, sitting crossed-legged in the middle of the floor. I am stealthy as a cat, at one with the shadows. In my element with the thunderstorm raging outside…

  I tilt back my head and gaze up at the two skylights in the dramatically sloping roof. The rain lashes in hard sheets against the double glazing, pouring off the glass in a perpetual cascade of water. It’s lovely. It soothes my soul.

  The only light in the vast space comes from my tiny torch, which I have placed on the floorboards next to me, pointing at the closed door of the attic.

  Beyond the glass, the night sky is as black as the pits of Hell, the meagre light emanating from the crescent moon swallowed by the angry black clouds.

  Absently, I look around the big space, which spreads out over every room of the house. I take in their stuff – the boxes filled with all sorts of crap, gathering dust and going mouldy, the unused, unloved, smaller pieces of furniture that they managed to somehow manoeuvre up the narrow flight of stairs. There are just mountains of junk. There is everything up here, and my gaze drifts over the rolled-up rugs, paintings, wicker chairs, garden furniture, some work tools – even a clothes-less, headless, ghostly-white mannequin that makes me jump every time the attic is pierced by a stab of lightning.

  Here I sit, absently wondering why they don’t use this attic as a bedroom, because it would look amazing, done up properly. But then, where would they put all their shit? And how in the hell would they get beds and stuff up here, anyway? Everything would have to be flat-packed.

  I’m growing bored, and I fidget in increasing mental and physical discomfort, shifting my weight from one buttock to the other, before lying flat on my back with my hands laced behind my head, my feet crossed at the ankles. I’ve only been up here ten minutes, but it feels like forever.

  Surely I can risk going downstairs, soon?

  Also, it’s cold up here. The house is well-insulated, stopping the heat that rises upwards from the rest of the house from escaping completely through the roof, but it’s still chilly. It’s seeping into my bones, and I want to go back down into the house, where it’s warmer. Besides, I’m pretty much desperate to see what they’re doing; it’s why I’m here, after all.

  But I have to wait a little while longer until the fun really starts.

  I pull out my smartphone from a pocket of the hoodie I am wearing, and the screen flares into life with a gentle swipe of a finger. It is just gone nine. Ugh. They might not go to bed for hours yet.

  I hope they do soon. I hope they have sex, because I want to watch. It turns me on, and enrages me, in equal measure. Shane may not be the best lover – he’s inconsiderate, clumsy and prone to jackhammering – but that doesn’t stop me from wanting to keep him all for myself. Because he is mine. And if I can’t have him, then no one can.

  It should be safe to go down, now. Tess only came up to use the bathroom, although why she couldn’t go downstairs, God only knows.

  She heard you crunching around up here, says the little voice in my head – a voice that sounds suspiciously like Tess. It has that same, holier-than-thou lilt, like butter wouldn’t melt. God she is so sanctimonious, so self-righteous.

  Christ, that cow is every bit as crazy as I am – she’s been in the loony bin, just like I have. It is where we met, after all. Shame for her that she doesn’t remember. But I’m sure that it will all come to her, in due course.

  No matter. I can’t let her crawl under my skin like this, I have things that I need to do.

  Pushing aside my somewhat complicated feelings towards Tess, I get to my feet, wincing because my right leg is cramping. I stretch out the pins and needles, hissing in irritation. Lightning flashes in the black sky beyond the skylights, briefly illuminating the attic, and a few seconds later, thunder noisily rumbles. Movement dances in my peripheral vision with the sudden burst of light, making me gasp in fright, and I lurch back up into a sitting position.

  The room is immediately plunged into darkness once again, save for the weak light my small torch offers. It is pointing at the door, anyway, not behind me where I caught that swirl of movement.

  I snatch up the torch, jumping to my feet and pointing the beam of light in the opposite direction…

  A shaky little laugh of relief escapes my lips, because the movement was nothing more than my own reflection in the freestanding, full-length mirror. I must have winced on the ground when the lightning flashed, and caught the smallest glimpse of this on the outskirts of my vision.

  The top of this mirror nestles against the lowest point of the ceiling, where the roof joins the outside wall of the house. At its lowest point, the ceiling is around six feet high, going all the way up to an easy thirty feet at its highest point.

  I stare at my reflection in the trembling light – trembling because my hand is shaking so badly. I am such an idiot; I gave myself such a fright. I guess I’m jumpier than I first gave myself credit for. Hardly surprising, really, given the big plans I have made for myself tonight.

  You know what they say about the best laid plans, don’t you? mocks that voice in my head – the one that sounds like Tess. They always come a cropp
er…

  “Shut up,” I hiss at my reflection, taking a step towards the mirror.

  I look at myself in the quivering light, taking in the details of my reflection. Unlike Tess, I care a lot about my appearance, even when I am hiding in someone’s attic. I’m faintly pissed off that I’m not my usual, glamorous self. Don’t get me wrong, I still look good, just not as polished. I’ll never let myself go, like Tess has.

  Tonight, I am wearing a thin, black rollneck that hugs my slender torso and skinny black jeans, at the end of which I wear the softest, black trainers that are comfortable and noiseless. The outfit would almost look like a catsuit, given its tightness and the phenomenal body encased within it, but the black hoodie I wear over it mitigates this effect.

  I need it, though – a, for the pockets, b, for the warmth, and c, to tuck my hair inside the hood which I shall wear up when I’m outside. It also serves to obscure my smoking-hot body – the last thing I want is to be looked at twice tonight by some random on the street.

  I turn away from the mirror, shining my light on the closed attic door. She’s just been upstairs, for God’s sake – I wouldn’t have thought she’d be likely to come up again before bed, so I’m safe going down to the second landing. Unless Shane takes it upon himself to come upstairs, of course. But I don’t see why he should – he would just use the toilet downstairs, and it’s way too early for him to go to bed. There is no way he would come upstairs if he heard a floorboard creaking, as he generally has all the intuition of a dead goat.

  So I head on over to the door and gently pull it open…

  I am halfway down the stairs when I hear yet more creaking coming from the hallway below me; the unmistakable sound of feet on floorboards.

  Jesus Christ, not again.

  I freeze, holding my breath, every nerve ending in my body on high alert, preparing me for fight or flight. I strain my ears, listening. It has to be Tess. Either she’s heard me crunching around up here, or she’s getting ready for bed.