A Window Breaks

by C. M. Ewan

  And besides, no matter how much I wanted to believe it, the entire scenario was unlikely. A product of my groggy mind. I couldn’t think of the last time Holly had stirred in the night. Not since the weeks after Michael had died, I didn’t think. She was a deep sleeper. Always had been. Even as a young child, she’d only woken if she was scared or sick.

  Then a new thought struck me. Could it be Brodie? But why would he come here in the middle of the night?

  ‘Put on a light.’ The scratch of fear in Rachel’s voice was like fingernails on a chalkboard. ‘Please, Tom.’

  I stayed dead still. The more we talked, the more we could be heard. And I had the feeling Rachel’s voice had masked another slight noise from downstairs. A kind of ripping, tearing sound, but muffled and slow.

  Something cold and slick coiled up in my stomach as I remembered the break-in at Lionel’s home in London and the brutal attack on Jennifer. Her murder had been the result of a botched robbery. I thought of the artwork on the walls here. Was that what this was?

  Then, something else: the campfire in the woods.

  Had there been someone out there after all?

  I clenched my teeth, feeling the muscles in my neck pull taut. I told myself that maybe if I didn’t move – if I stayed hunched up in my bed – it wouldn’t be real.

  I didn’t want for it to be real.

  ‘Fine. I’ll put on a light.’

  Rachel lunged for the side of the bed. The sudden click of the switch on the bedside lamp sounded like a gun being cocked.

  Not that I know anything about guns. But times like this, the mind goes where it must.

  Light exploded around the room. Too bright. Too soon.

  I listened for a response from downstairs.

  Nothing.

  Rachel turned to me slowly, her eyes lit black in the sudden glare. Her jaw was slack, her skin shiny and bloodless. She looked terrified.

  ‘Maybe it’s Buster,’ I said.

  Normally, if Buster got up during the night he’d stretch and flap his ears, scratch his hind quarters, grunt and rub his head on the carpet, lick one of our hands, do something to wake one of us up because he knew he wouldn’t wake Holly and pretty much the only reason Buster moved during the night was if he needed to be let out to relieve himself. But we were in a strange house. Maybe he couldn’t find us.

  ‘Do you think he went downstairs?’ I whispered.

  Rachel didn’t answer. Something crossed her face. She turned and stared at the open door again. The glow of the bedside lamp was slanting out into the hallway. I saw her rise up a little, like she’d heard something out there. My heart beat hard in my chest.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m thinking.’

  Of the sliding door, I bet. I was too. Because there was no way Buster could open it on his own.

  So OK. Maybe for the first time in Buster’s life he’d managed to wake Holly instead of one of us. He’d been in her room, after all. So maybe Holly had got up with him instead of calling to us.

  There was a first time for everything, right? Or maybe Holly had woken in pain from her facial injuries and had needed a glass of water to swallow a couple of pills. Maybe Buster had gone downstairs with her. Maybe Holly had dropped her glass on the floor.

  Made sense.

  ‘I’ll go and take a look.’

  ‘Be careful.’

  I threw back the covers and sat on the edge of the bed. The night air was crisp. Goosebumps sprouted across my arms, shoulders and legs.

  My boxers were twisted up on the floor. I slipped them on. Then I crouched next to my suitcase, put on some jogging trousers and a vest and padded across the room in my bare feet. I paused at the doorway, listening, then slipped out into the corridor beyond. Exactly like the journey I had followed with the camera in my head.

  Only the corridor wasn’t unlit. Not completely. There was the soft glow of the bedside lamp in Rachel’s room bleeding into the black across the way. And at the end, beyond the mezzanine, the wavering halo effect from the downstairs lights. Holly must have flipped them on.

  I felt a sudden surge of relief. A slackening of my limbs.

  She was a good kid. Considerate not to wake us. Brave, when I thought of all she’d been through recently.

  But she’d nearly given her parents a coronary.

  I strolled on towards the light burning up from the living area. I was rubbing at my eyes. Stifling a yawn. I was getting ready to talk with my daughter.

  But when I reached the front of the mezzanine and took hold of the banister rail a sudden electric charge ripped through me.

  It wasn’t Holly down there.

  It was far, far worse than that.

  13

  Fear chased me back to my bedroom – that disabling, mind-jamming, heart-pumping kind of fear that only comes during a true crisis.

  ‘What is it?’ Rachel asked.

  She was kneeling on the bed in her T-shirt, tugging and twisting the hem in her hands. The moment she saw me her eyes went huge. I was wearing my fear like a heavy coat.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  How to tell your wife this? How to begin to say these words?

  My head was pounding so hard my vision shook.

  ‘There are two men downstairs.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Shh. They’ve hurt Buster.’

  ‘What do you mean they’ve hurt him?’

  I meant that one of the men had been stooped at the waist, dragging Buster across the floor by his hind legs. I meant that Buster had been limp and inert, his tongue hanging from his mouth.

  The other man had been standing by the open door to the deck, facing out to the storm. The wind was driving against him, carrying with it a hard rain that scattered across the wooden floorboards like spilled salt.

  My pulse beat in my throat.

  ‘Tom, please. Is Buster OK? What’s happening?’

  ‘I think they’ve killed him.’

  ‘What?’

  Rachel rocked forwards onto her hands and knees and bowed her head. It was hitting her hard now, reality beginning to buck and swell beneath her like a boat on the sea.

  I thought of the hunters Brodie had told us about. Was that who the two men were? The callous way one of them had been dragging Buster – like he was a hare caught in one of their snares – seemed to fit with it.

  Brodie had said they wouldn’t be back while we were here. Word would get around. But what if word had got around and they’d come here because of that?

  Or – and this was worse, I think – what if they’d been here from the start? What if they’d been here all day? Waiting.

  ‘Oh God, Tom. Where’s Holly?’

  ‘I’m going to check. I’ll go outside, along the balcony from your room to hers. They can’t see me that way. You need to get dressed, Rachel. Do it now.’

  But Rachel wasn’t listening to me. She sprang off the bed, barged me out of the way and darted across the hallway into her room.

  I chased after her. She was already on her way out through the glass door on to the high balcony. As she released the door the wind snatched at it and I had to catch it to stop it from slamming with a bang.

  I pressed it closed behind me, the wind blustering against my back. The storm was wild outside. Sheets of rain pelted down hard. The balcony was drenched. A watery film gleamed blue-white in the moonlight, kicking up in fans from Rachel’s heels as she ran. I splashed after her, my heart knocking against my ribs, watching as she grabbed the handle to Holly’s door and rattled it.

  Locked.

  Rachel whined in panic and used her forearm to swipe rain from the glass as she peered inside.

  ‘She’s in there.’ Her hands squeaked down the soaked pane. ‘I think she’s asleep.’

  I looked around me in a hurry, then reached back and grabbed for one of the metal patio chairs. The rain hammered down like falling silver coins, bouncing off the chair as I lifted it and twisted and got ready to
punch a metal leg through the glass.

  ‘No!’ Rachel blocked me with her arms crossed in front of her face. ‘Too loud.’

  She swiped the rain from her face, staring at me. She was right. The men would hear a sudden, brash crack in the quiet of the lodge. Same thing if we knocked on the door and tried to wake Holly. What if she startled and said something? Chances were the men would respond before we could get her out.

  I looked back along the balcony. Rain had beaded on the lengths of high-tensile steel cable that had been threaded horizontally beneath the banister rail. The cables quivered in the wind.

  I leaned out and looked over the yard, rain whipping in my face. The only vehicle I could see was our Volvo, down in the carport. It looked small and very far away.

  ‘This way, Rachel. Hurry.’

  I ran back along the balcony, my hand up in front of my eyes. The tops of the nearby pines thrashed and shook. The rain splattered down hard.

  ‘We can’t just leave her, Tom.’

  I spun back and stared at Rachel, my chest hitching and falling at an irregular tempo. How could she think that? How could she even begin to believe—?

  ‘I’m not going to leave her,’ I said. ‘I’m going to get her. I promise. But we have to hurry. Now.’

  I grabbed her and dragged her after me into her bedroom. Her mobile was on the side. I pressed it into her hands.

  ‘Get the police. Message someone. Anyone. Get help.’

  Rachel clutched the phone and jabbed at the screen.

  I turned, searching around me for an improvised weapon. The room seemed to blur. I was having difficulty thinking straight and my whole body seemed to pulse with the beating of my heart. I saw the table lamps on either side of the bed. But if I grabbed one I’d be trailing flex. And they were chubby and unwieldy. The wine bottle, then?

  ‘Wi-Fi’s not working.’

  I spun back. Rachel was pressing a hand to her forehead. I felt an emptiness open up inside of me.

  ‘It’s not working, Tom. There’s no signal.’

  ‘Wait here.’

  I blundered across the hallway into my own bedroom and picked up my phone from next to the bed.

  Please work. Please work. Please—

  But when I powered it on, I got the same result.

  No Wi-Fi. No signal.

  My lungs shutdown. I looked up, feeling the room begin to spin. Rachel was blocking the doorway, her T-shirt soaked, clutching at her hair.

  Two strange men. Two intruders in the dead of night. Rachel’s worst fear made real. Her own personal nightmare.

  But it was worse than she knew.

  A cold numbness spread through my body as I pocketed my phone and pushed her back into her room.

  ‘Listen to me, Rachel. I have to tell you this. They’re wearing suits.’

  ‘Suits?’

  ‘Coveralls. The disposable kind that zip up the front. They have hoods on. Masks on. Plastic gloves.’

  And they were wearing ankle-high rubber boots. Like government scientists sent in to clean up a chemical spill. Like workers in an abattoir.

  Rachel sagged. I held her up by her arms. She looked bloodless and stricken but she understood what I was saying. I almost wished she didn’t.

  ‘This isn’t a burglary, Tom. Burglars don’t come dressed that way.’

  I stared at her. Maybe. But then again, maybe not. I thought once more of the botched robbery at Lionel’s London home that had led to Jennifer’s death. I thought of the police’s main suspect, Tony Bryant, and how he’d never been caught. Then I thought of the Damien Hirst print over the floating staircase. Had Bryant come back for more? Maybe with an accomplice? If the men were here to steal the print, they’d be coming upstairs soon.

  The temperature in the room – cool to begin with – seemed to drop about ten degrees.

  We had no mobile signal. The Wi-Fi wasn’t functioning. The only landline handset I was aware of was downstairs in the kitchen. Our coats and boots were in the laundry room. We were isolated by geography, cut off by the storm.

  Oh God.

  I needed some kind of weapon and I needed it now.

  ‘Keep trying your phone.’

  I stepped into the en suite. The air seemed to crackle. There were nail scissors in Rachel’s washbag. I gripped them in my clammy fist but it didn’t feel like enough. I stashed the scissors in a pocket of my jogging trousers, the opposite side to my phone, then stepped out and threw open the doors to the wardrobe, pushing aside a terry-cloth robe.

  There.

  A long metal pole. It had a hook on one end, rubber grips on the other. There was a crank handle at the base. It was the pole for opening and closing the skylight in the sloping ceiling overhead.

  I pulled it out and held it crossways in front of me, testing its heft. It felt too heavy and too light all at the same time. Too heavy because my arms were weak with fear. Too light because I wasn’t sure what damage it could do.

  ‘I’m going to get Holly.’

  My voice sounded like it was coming from somebody else – someone who didn’t fully believe what he was saying. I moved past Rachel towards the bedroom door. I was breathing so hard I was close to hyperventilating.

  ‘Are you crazy? They’ll see you.’

  But if I didn’t go now, I was afraid I wouldn’t go at all.

  ‘They didn’t see me before. I’ll be careful. Get dressed. Keep trying the Wi-Fi. And lock this door behind me. Push that dresser across behind it if you can.’

  The dresser was a mighty thing. It was made of solid mahogany with five curved drawers on the front. I wasn’t sure Rachel could shift it by itself but if she could then it would make for a reasonable barricade.

  ‘Hunt around you for a weapon. Anything you can find. Hairspray. A razor. Anything.’

  ‘Tom.’

  ‘It’s going to be OK, Rachel.’ I blinked and black spots danced before my eyes. ‘We’re going to be OK.’

  ‘Tom, please. Just wait.’

  But I didn’t wait. I was gone.

  14

  Out of the bedroom. Along the hallway. Following the same path as the imaginary camera in my head. Keeping low. Staying tight in to the wall and crawling along on my hands and knees with the metal pole gripped lengthways in my right hand and my pulse jumping in my throat.

  I had no plan. I had no idea what to do. Should I try to attack the men, shout at them, scare them? Or should I stay hidden and try to get Holly and Rachel away?

  My elbows shook and buckled. Tremors passed through me.

  Noise. Ahead and below. Nothing identifiable. Just the muted, indistinct sounds made by two strangers stalking around and trying to keep sound to a minimum. There was the occasional rasp and crackle of their disposable coveralls. The dull tread of rubber boots on the wooden flooring. The whoop and bluster of the wind outside.

  The rush of my breathing was making it difficult to hear. I was panting very fast but it didn’t seem to be helping. There wasn’t enough air in my lungs.

  Sweat prickled through my hair as I craned my neck and looked down. Far below me, the sliding glass door was still open, rain spraying in like it was coming from a hose. No sign of Buster. Or Holly.

  Was this a mistake? I hoped so. Maybe the men believed the lodge was empty? Or had they come because they knew we were here?

  Questions. Too many of them. Too scary to handle. And I had no time for them now.

  I swept my gaze to the left, towards Holly’s bedroom. Her door was hanging ajar, the same way I’d left it earlier.

  Don’t come out. Please don’t come out. Keep sleeping until I get to you.

  So get to her now!

  I crawled on. First sliding my right hand and knee forwards. Then my left. My shakes were becoming more exaggerated and I had a sensation like vertigo – as if I was crawling along a narrow beam above a deadly drop.

  Another angle on the living space. I cautiously raised my head. My breathing stopped. The two men were squatted next to o
ne another, unzipping three large sports holdalls. The holdalls were laid out on a square of blue plastic sheeting. Two of them were empty. One was not.

  My heart pounded even faster.

  The empty holdalls looked – and believe me, I really didn’t want to be thinking this way – like improvised body bags.

  I closed my eyes and felt the cold numbing sensation seep in from my extremities, pooling around my heart and lungs.

  Calm down. Think. Holly needs you to calm down.

  A slight clinking and my eyes sprung open again. The men were emptying equipment out of the third holdall onto the plastic sheeting. My vision throbbed. There were ropes and restraints. There was a double-barrelled shotgun and a handgun. There was a pry bar, a short-handled axe, a roll of gaffer tape, a claw hammer and a rubber mallet.

  Oh Jesus. Not good. Really not good.

  Three body bags. Three members of my family.

  The plastic sheeting. The disposable coveralls. The firearms and the sinister DIY equipment.

  This isn’t a burglary, Tom.

  I had to get my family out of here. I had to do it now.

  The men stood suddenly and I sprawled forwards, lying flat on the ground, my chin grazing carpet.

  A scuffing noise behind me. It sounded like Rachel was shunting the dresser behind her bedroom door.

  Good.

  Did the men hear it? I looked up. No, it didn’t seem so. Their heads were close together, like they were whispering through their masks. Their masks were cupped shells of paper with elasticated straps that stretched around their plastic hoods. The height I was looking down at them from warped their dimensions, but I could tell that one of the men was taller and broader. The other was slighter and shorter.

  I focused in on the bigger man and a dizzying thought struck me. Could it be Brodie? Was that why he was in coveralls, hiding his face? He looked roughly the right build, right height. And he’d know about the Wi-Fi. He’d know how to disable it.

  Was Brodie bothering you?

  I’d told Rachel no, but the truth is his interest in her had bothered me. There’d been an odd kind of furtive quality to it – an energy it was hard to put my finger on. What if he’d taken offence at Rachel’s brush-off? What if I’d angered him when I’d made it clear it was time for him to leave? What if he’d come back tonight for my wife?