He turned. Shadows hung heavy about the room as twilight gave way to night. He was alone, but the sensation of eyes following his movements wouldn’t abate. Guy switched off the radio. Somehow, the silence that replaced the static was even worse.
Chapter Eight
April 1965
Thomas leaned against the kitchen’s doorframe. A vicious wind tugged at the trees, ripping off leaves and bending some of the more supple trunks nearly horizontal. Any late-afternoon sun had been blotted out by clouds. He swept his eyes across the spaces between the trees, back and forward in a constant loop. He knew she was there, even if he couldn’t see her. It was an awful feeling to be watched without any way to watch back.
“Thomas?”
He turned to face Louise. She’d entered the kitchen silently and stood by the fridge, her face calm but her arms folded.
The words were out of his mouth before he had a chance to consider whether they were wise. “I’m not delusional.”
“I know.” She seemed to be trying to sound reassuring, but the undercurrent of uncertainty in her tone left him feeling sick. She licked at her lips and looked away, towards where Thomas could hear his children playing in the family room. “Something’s got to change.”
“We need to be patient.”
“It’s been weeks, Thomas. You need to go back to work before you lose your job.”
An irrational frustration built in his chest. He knew Louise was trying to be supportive, but she still didn’t seem to understand the severity of the situation. The old tree by the side of the house scratched at the stones, its dead branches scraping, scraping, scraping… It needled his nerves, making him twitchy and irritable.
He stepped away from the door and lowered his voice, even though there was no way his words could carry to the woods. “Not yet. She can’t keep this up much longer. We’ve just got to hold on a little more, and I’m sure she’ll snap.”
Louise chewed on her lip. “When was the last time you saw her?”
“What? She’s out there right now—”
“But you haven’t seen her, have you?”
“I can feel her!” The words came out more harshly than he’d intended. Louise’s face tightened, and Thomas cleared his throat and lowered his voice. “I can feel her watching me. Constantly.” After a beat of silence, he repeated, “I’m not delusional.”
Louise exhaled and rubbed at the inner corners of her eyes. She opened her mouth to say more but instead waved a hand and crossed to the family room. Aching frustration tightened Thomas’s throat as he watched her go. He knew Louise wanted to believe him, but it was hard for her when Amy kept so well hidden.
And she was right. The bank wouldn’t welcome him back if he took too much more time off work.
But what else can I do? He chewed at his too-short thumbnail as he moved back to the window. The eyes were still there, unseen but intense enough to make his skin crawl. He thought she must be smiling.
“Damn it, damn it all.” Returning to work would mean leaving his family alone, and that was too risky to even consider. But he’d been away for weeks. Vague excuses about prolonged illness wouldn’t carry him much farther. For all he knew, it might already be too late; he could step through the bank’s doors and face a termination notice.
I could tell them the real reason we spend our days huddled inside our home, but… Picturing Westmeyer’s flat, bull-like face, Thomas squeezed his lips together. Westmeyer wouldn’t take the news about Amy easily. Thomas and his job would be safer if he kept mute on that quarter.
A branch snapped free from its tree and tumbled across the overgrown lawn. Thomas watched it until it disappeared past the corner of the house. His thumb ached from where he’d gnawed the nail too far.
Louise is right. This wait is killing us.
He pushed away from the window and went into the dining room. The table was large enough for a banquet. Thomas ran his hand over the dark wood and tried not to let the corners of his mouth twitch down. Compared to the cramped apartment he and Louise had stayed in when they had first married, and the barely larger suburban house they’d moved to when Dan and Becca were born, Rookward was a palace. But instead of feeling luxurious, the rooms carried an air of neglect. Furniture that had fit snugly into their old house was dwarfed by the empty space around it. Some days, Thomas felt as though they were staying in a hotel; fragments of their lives were scattered through the building, but they didn’t belong, not really.
The tree continued to scratch at the wall. It sounded like a dog begging to be let in. Thomas’s fingers itched with the urge to snap the dead branches off.
His attention drifted back to the window and the forest beyond it. Something on the glass caught his notice. Thomas rounded the table and bent over the windowsill to see it more clearly. Letters had been scratched into the bottom-left corner of the glass, just above the frame. They were jagged and every line painfully straight, making Thomas think they had been cut with the sharp corner of a stone: PROMISE.
His fingers trembled when he reached out to touch the words. They were small, small enough that he wouldn’t have noticed them if he hadn’t been staring at the window. He swallowed and found his mouth painfully dry.
How long have these been here? Did I just not notice them before today, or are they fresh?
An image flashed through his mind: Amy, her dark hair a mess of tangles about her face, her dark eyes horrifically intent, pressed against the side of their house as she carved her message. Thomas’s stomach churned.
He rubbed his thumb over the marks, as though he could erase them, but they’d been cut into the outside of the glass. Amy would have had to write each letter backwards so that it was readable from inside. Thomas pulled his hands back and wrapped them around his torso.
The gale seemed to grow fiercer. It whipped at the forest, stripping branches and leaves. Flecks of dirt danced across the lawn and stone-bordered flower garden. Louise had planted fresh plants—poppies and carnations—two days before, but he could no longer see the cheerful reds and golds bobbing in the wind. Thomas squinted, and his breath fogged over the glass as he leaned closer to the window. The flowers had all been cut; only the stems remained. Long and bright green, they poked up like empty flagpoles, but the jewels topping them had been removed. The sight made Thomas’s skin crawl. It was like witnessing the aftermath of a beheading.
He turned aside. The blood in his veins was too hot. His scalp itched, and he scratched at it as he paced into the foyer. He’d thought Rookward would be a sanctuary, their safe shelter to keep the hungry tiger out. But it had become a cage instead. The tiger paced around, ever restless, ever watchful, and he was helpless to leave.
Thomas pressed his hands over his ears as he came to a halt in the foyer. The scratching was unbearable. The dead branches never stilled for even a moment but scraped at the house, setting his teeth on edge and mingling with the swing’s groans to create an awful, unceasing cacophony.
No… it’s not branches. Thomas dropped his hands and looked to the left, towards the foyer’s front door. The tree grew by the house’s other side, near his bedroom. The incessant scratching was coming from the porch.
His tongue was coated with a tacky, unpleasant flavour as he moved towards the door. His palms itched worse than ever, but he felt incapable of turning away, no matter how much he wanted to.
The foyer’s lights didn’t reach the front door quite as well as they should have. It left the area in shadows, though a block of thin light came through the rectangular window set at head height. The wood shivered. Thomas tried to tell himself it was the wind, but the scratching was louder.
He reached out and rested his fingertips against the door. It reverberated under his hand, and the shudders echoed through Thomas’s limbs and down his spine. His breath was shallow, but his lungs felt too small for anything more. He took another step forward, until his face was at the window. The stippled glass distorted the outside world. He saw a shimmer of dark
wood—the porch’s supports—and, farther away, the blurred forest being rocked by the gale.
Thomas bent an inch closer, until his nose nearly grazed the glass, as he strained to see into the deep gloom of the porch’s corner. He held his breath, but he could no longer hear the scratching.
A hand slammed into the window. Amy’s long, bloodless face appeared beside it, ghosting out of the shadows. Wild eyes fixed on him. Colourless lips stretched into a demented smile. Her wild hair lashed about her face, pulled into disarray by the vicious wind.
Thomas yelped as he jerked back. He reflexively reached for the door’s three bolts, but they were all drawn and locked. He stumbled back until he hit the staircase’s bannister, his heart caught in his throat and beating so fiercely, he thought he might collapse.
Amy’s unblinking eyes tracked his every movement, watching him hungrily. Thomas turned and dashed up the stairs, using his hands to aid his ascent and knocking the family portraits askew.
The scratching, scrabbling sound resumed as Amy drew her nails across the wood, wordlessly asking to be let inside.
Chapter Nine
Guy started awake. He was freezing cold, but some of the shivers came from the dream that had woken him. He’d been standing in Rookward’s foyer, looking for something—or someone—outside. Guy frowned, trying to retain the details of the dream, but they drained away from him before he could grip them.
He rolled over to face the window. The crescent moon fought to pierce the clouds. He rubbed at his blurred eyes and groaned as the muscles protested. It’s been a while since I did so much physical work in one day. On the upside, I’ll probably be super buff by the time I’m done with this house.
The air was freezing. Guy briefly considered running to the truck for the spare set of blankets. He reached for his phone, which he’d left next to his bed, to check the time. Its batteries were already dead. He snorted and put it aside.
It can’t be too far to dawn, surely? As soon as the sun comes up, I’ll get out the portable stovetop and boil some coffee.
Guy tried to lie still and wait for sleep to reclaim him, but the forgotten dream had left him twitchy. He counted the passing seconds as he watched shadows creep across the ceiling.
A door groaned. He squeezed his lids closed. The sound hung in the air long after it should have, jarring his nerves and making his palms sweat despite the chill.
I shut the master bedroom door. I shut the child’s wardrobe. What’s making the noise?
A floorboard squeaked. Guy’s eyes shot open. He held still, breath frozen in his lungs, as he strained his ears. Silence reigned for a prolonged moment, then a second floorboard flexed, this time closer to his room.
It’s just the house moving in the wind. He worried at his lower lip. A scraping, scratching noise came from the hallway, as though someone were running their fingers across the tattered wallpaper.
Guy tasted blood as his tooth nicked the skin. His breathing was unnaturally loud, but he was incapable of quietening it. The scratching noise drew closer, grating at his nerves and chilling his blood, then ceased just outside his room.
Get up! His limbs didn’t want to move. Find a weapon, idiot!
Guy thrashed his way out of the sleeping bag in a burst of energy. He lunged towards the table, where he’d left the torch, the only weighty, solid object in the room. Guy seized it, silently cursing himself for not bringing at least a hammer. He pressed the button, but the light didn’t turn on.
No. C’mon! Don’t do this!
He’d checked the batteries before loading the torch into the pickup truck. Did it somehow turn on during the drive and drain them? Guy hit the button several more times, but he remained surrounded by darkness.
The noises in the hallway didn’t repeat. Guy considered leaving the door shut—even bracing the chair against the handle to jam it—but that would put him in the worst possible position. He’d left the truck’s keys in the dining room. If the stranger found them, they could take the vehicle, leaving Guy stranded at the house without any transportation or phone.
He wasn’t a small man, and none of his acquaintances would have described him as meek, but the idea of opening the door terrified him. The sounds had stopped on the threshold, which meant he would have only a split second to assess and respond to whatever waited on the other side—and his only defence came from a broken torch and his fists.
As Guy reached for the handle, a new idea flitted through his mind. What if the being outside isn’t human? He pictured something unnaturally elongated and sightless, its toothy maw stretched wide. Or perhaps the woman he’d seen earlier, her pale skin, still blurred and distorted even without the glass filter, waited with her long, bony fingers stretched towards him. His mind knew it was a fantasy—but at that moment, in the heart of night-time and isolated in a house that turned his stomach, he couldn’t erase the images from his mind.
Do it now, quickly, before you lose your courage.
He twisted the handle and yanked open the door. Its hinges wailed, and Guy flinched as his mind interpreted the noise as a monster’s scream.
Darkness enveloped the hallway except for the rectangle where moonlight washed through his open door. Guy hunted through the darkness, straining to pick out any motion or colour.
Something crackled and clicked to his right. Guy swivelled towards it, his heart blocking his throat. It took him a second to identify what he’d heard: the baby monitor coming to life.
That’s impossible. He stepped out of the room, his instincts begging him to stay put but his mind insisting he had to get the keys. The batteries would be long dead. There’s no way it can still work.
But what else could it be?
The crackles stuttered into silence then started again, slightly louder. It might have been his imagination hunting for patterns amongst chaos, but Guy thought he caught the lilt of a word amongst the static.
He took another step then a third. Each pace took him deeper into the blackness, closer to the source of the disturbance, and he stretched out a hand. The fingers touched the dry, brittle wallpaper. He wanted to cringe away from it, but it was his only guidance that night.
The baby monitor fell back into silence. Guy’s fingertips grazed the corner where the hallway turned, and he followed it around. The master bedroom’s door stood open. A block of moonlight flowed through.
I closed it… didn’t I?
He held the distinct memory of shutting the door, but as he moved nearer, doubt permeated his mind. What if I only dreamed I shut it?
As he passed the children’s bedroom, the baby monitor came back to life, this time carrying the sounds of his own footsteps. They were badly distorted and thick with interference but clear enough that they couldn’t have been anything else. He stopped in front of the master bedroom door and nudged it fully open.
Vivid bloodstains drenched the bed. The liquid ran over the quilt, dribbling to the ground, and spread across the carpet like a halo. In the moonlight, it took on an ethereal sheen, but the smell was unmistakable. It filled Guy’s mouth and throat, making his stomach lurch. He grabbed at the door’s frame to keep himself on his feet as dizziness roared through him.
The baby monitor on the table beside the bed crackled. A woman’s voice spoke through it. The words were muffled but awfully, chillingly serene. “Thomas. Don’t leave me, Thomas…”
Guy’s vision swam. He staggered backwards, and his legs failed, dropping him to the floor. The impact jarred his teeth and sent his head spinning. He lay there for a moment, eyes fixed on the cracked ceiling as he struggled to draw in oxygen, then the world levelled as the roar in his ears faded.
Moving gingerly, Guy raised himself into a sitting position. The smell no longer bothered him. He blinked towards the bedroom. The shadows were thick, but he couldn’t see the bloodstains.
“What…”
He’d dropped the torch when he fell. He picked it up and, on a chance, pressed the button. A bright circle of light app
eared on the wall opposite. Confusion fogged Guy’s mind as he blinked at the beam then turned it towards the open door.
The bed was clean, its blue quilt dusty but unstained. The baby monitor beside it stayed quiet. What the hell just happened?
Guy rolled onto his knees then slowly got to his feet. They shook, but a dread-filled curiosity made them carry him towards the children’s bedroom. He sought out the transmitter attached to the cot’s edge and tapped it twice. No noise came from the master bedroom. He dropped the receiver and returned to the hallway to check the room a final time, just in case. The bed, dust-coated and dry, stood where it was supposed to.
Was I sleepwalking? Guy’s first instinct was to reject the idea—the experience had seemed too vivid, too real—but it made a lot of sense. The footsteps, the baby monitors that worked decades after their batteries must have run out, the non-existent blood, the voice—there was no way it could have been a real experience. Guy had felt vaguely uneasy ever since arriving at Rookward, and the nerves had combined to make him sleepwalk and served up a nightmare at the same time.
He lowered the torch and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. His head still hurt from when he’d fallen, and his heart refused to slow. I haven’t sleepwalked since I was a kid. And even then, I never had dreams during it. Maybe the house is getting to me more than I thought.
The building was still dark, but when he looked through the master bedroom’s window, the barest hint of light glossed over the top of the trees. Nautical dawn. That means real dawn isn’t too far away.
He glanced to his right, where the hallway led to his bedroom. Guy didn’t think he would be able to sleep again that night. So he turned towards the stairs and let the torchlight guide him to the lower level.
Rookward was beautifully quiet. Not even the ticking of the guest room clock reached him. Guy went into the dining room and found the keys where he’d left them on the table. There was no longer any urgency to leave the house, but he tucked them into his pocket anyway and dug the portable stovetop out of his crate of supplies. He set it up and warmed his fingers by the flames for a moment before filling a saucepan with water and setting it on top to heat.
The Haunting of Rookward House Page 5
