The Evil Within

by S M Hardy

  It was a sobering thought, probably because it was true. I was scared of being alone. Scared of what I might hear, scared of what I might see, scared of what I might do. Frightened that I may succumb to the fresh bottle of whisky I’d put in the drinks cabinet in the living room, or that on returning to the kitchen it would have spirited its way onto the worktop, a shiny crystal glass by its side ready and waiting.

  I found myself pacing from room to room, and with each step my anxiety levels rose up another notch. I made myself stop and take a deep breath. At this rate I was going to drive myself to an early grave without the help of anyone else.

  I went back into the kitchen to dry up and put away the mugs, and the mundane simplicity of it all began to calm me. As I absently picked up the teaspoon and began polishing it, I glanced out of the window at the trees at the bottom of the garden. Apart from my manic chase through to the church I hadn’t given the small wood much thought.

  My mind began to drift back to that morning, and I wondered why Krystal had wanted me to chase her? I dropped the spoon in the drawer and gazed down the garden, looking but not seeing. She had wanted me to follow her. Every time I’d been about to give up she had let me catch a glimpse of her or hear her singing. But why?

  Was it so I would meet Reverend Davies?

  I dropped the tea towel over the back of the chair.

  Or was it so I would feel her killer’s rage?

  I mulled on it. I doubted she could control either of those things. I was missing something, I was sure of it. I opened the back door and stepped outside. But why else would she have wanted me to follow her to the church? Or was I reading too much into it?

  I pinched the bridge of my nose and closed my eyes for a moment. All I was doing was giving myself a headache. Did I really believe a dead child was trying to pass me a message from beyond the grave? Peter Davies had spoken to me – why couldn’t she?

  Because in your heart you knew she was dead?

  Good point. I turned to go back inside. Maybe she was just being a kid, dead or not. Maybe she was just playing with me. Maybe …

  The flowers – who had left the flowers?

  I swung around and began walking down the garden towards the gate. There were fresh flowers on her grave. Her parents were in New York with her grandparents. Were her other grandparents local? Did she have any other family living close by who would lay flowers on her grave? I somehow thought not. Jed hadn’t mentioned any other family and I’m sure he would have, even if only in passing.

  I opened the gate and strode into the wood, the dead leaves now a damp mess beneath my feet. I hurried through the trees, beginning to jog and then run, the compulsion to get to the grave and take a look at those flowers overwhelming me. Logic was telling me to slow down – what difference would a few more moments make? A little voice inside my head goaded me on, saying the opposite; that this was very important, maybe a clue, if not an answer to the whole mystery of Krystal’s death.

  I ran out of the trees and into the sunshine. Ahead of me I could see weather-beaten grey stone. I slowed to a trot as I searched for the collapsed part of the wall where I had entered the churchyard before, and then I was clambering over a heap of little more than rubble.

  In the sunshine the cemetery looked a whole different place. I stopped just inside the boundary, scanning the rows of headstones. From memory, Krystal’s grave was right over the other side of the cemetery, but last time I’d been disorientated by the mist and the disturbing thoughts flowing through my head. I started to weave my way through the tombstones.

  Then I saw a tall, grey-coated figure in the distance, standing with its back to me, head bowed, and past it a glimpse of white marble – Krystal’s grave?

  I sped up, dodging past toppled headstones, trying to avoid treading on the graves of the dead.

  The figure straightened and began to move towards the path.

  ‘Wait!’ I shouted.

  The figure paused mid step and then set off again, hurrying to get away.

  ‘Stop, please!’

  If anything, he or she sped up.

  I was running now, leaping over graves to try and catch up with the lone mourner, but then the figure disappeared around the side of the church.

  ‘Damn.’

  I carried on running until I reached the stone slab path leading around to the front of the church. I heard feet on stone, the creak of the gate, a car door slam, the revving of an engine and a roar as the car drove away with tyres screeching on tarmac.

  I ran a few more steps, then ground to a stop. I was too late. I had missed him and as he clearly didn’t want to talk with me, I doubted he’d be visiting again anytime soon. I turned and made my way back to Krystal’s grave. Sure enough, there were fresh flowers lying just beneath the headstone.

  I crouched down to take a closer look. This time they had left a small posy of pink and white carnations tied with a shiny silver ribbon. The sort of sprig of flowers a little girl would probably like. There was no card or anything else to identify who the mystery mourner had been. If it had been a member of the family, surely there would have been something – a message or endearment, perhaps?

  A fat, fluffy bee, humming happily to itself, meandered its way past my ear to alight on a pink petal. I got to my feet and started back to the cottage. There was nothing else for me here.

  When I reached the cottage and the half-open back door it occurred to me that, after all Jed’s hard work to keep persons who meant me harm out, I had, with not a second’s thought, run off, leaving the place vulnerable to anyone who happened by. Cursing myself for being an idiot, I began the process of walking from room to room checking for intruders with murderous intent.

  I was too angry with myself to be scared. I marched through the house almost daring someone to be lying in wait. That was until I had checked my bedroom and walked back out into the hallway and my eyes were drawn upwards to the loft hatch.

  My mouth went dry and suddenly it seemed unnaturally quiet. I could hear my heart thumping and feel the throb of its rapid beat at my temple.

  I wasn’t going to do it. It was one paranoiac step too far. I started towards the stairs, then stopped. Was it worth a sleepless night if I didn’t check up there? With slumped shoulders I headed for the bathroom to get the pole and torch, all the while telling myself it was a waste of time and energy, but even so not believing it.

  I reached up with the pole – and my mobile began to ring. My first, my last …

  I dropped the length of wood and ran to the stairs, taking the steps two at a time. Despite my terrifying afternoon hiding on the cliff path and promising that I would carry my mobile with me at all times, I had left it on the kitchen table when I’d gone out this afternoon. I was definitely an idiot.

  I jumped down the last couple of steps and flew along the hall. My first, my last … I grabbed the door frame and swung into the kitchen – to silence.

  ‘No, damn you. No!’

  I snatched my mobile up off the table and peered at the screen. No missed calls. No incoming calls for days. I flung the thing down, sending it spinning across the tabletop. I had heard it. I had heard it. I slumped down onto a chair and, elbows on table, flopped forward, head in hands.

  I couldn’t deny it any longer. I was losing it. There were no ghosts; no little girls in red cardigans, no barrel-chested psychopaths in grey, no dead fiancées calling me on the phone. I was having a breakdown.

  I lifted my head and wiped my face with my hand and it came away wet. ‘Oh, Kat. Why did you leave me?’ and I began to sob.

  I woke with a start, completely disorientated. Where the hell was I? I sat up, glancing around, and it was only the glow of the green fluorescent clock on the cooker that reminded me I was in the kitchen. I struggled to my feet and across the room to switch on the light. It was past nine and my eyes and head were throbbing, and my tongue filled my mouth like a flap of dried leather.

  ‘God, I feel like shit,’ I muttered, immediat
ely followed by, ‘I need a piss.’

  I stumbled into the hallway and to the stairs, turning on lights as I went, at the same time it began to come back to me as to why I was in such a sorry state.

  ‘Damn it,’ and I felt my eyes begin to bubble up again. I rubbed the back of my hand across my face and started up the stairs. ‘Hot fuck and damn it,’ I said, but there was no heat behind my words; they sounded hollow, lost and defeated. I was even climbing the stairs like an old man, all hunched over.

  I paused on the third step. ‘You are so fucking pathetic,’ I told myself, took a deep breath, straightened up, wiped my eyes and looked up to the landing above me.

  I staggered, lurching backwards and almost fell before grabbing hold of the banister. The hatch to the loft was hanging open, the ladder was up, but the fucking hatch was open. How could that be? Unless …

  I took a couple of deep breaths, trying to control the panic bubbling up inside me. I hadn’t got as far as opening the hatch. The phone had interrupted me. I slowly walked up the stairs, eyes glued to the dark rectangle above me. Then it occurred to me that the need for caution was probably long past. I had been asleep at the kitchen table for hours. If whoever had opened the loft hatch had wanted to harm me, they would have done so. They certainly wouldn’t have hung around all evening waiting for me to wake up.

  The pole was lying on the carpet, but where was the torch? I glanced around the hallway. I had taken the torch from the cupboard in the bathroom, I remembered its weight in my hand. Then my mobile rang – or not. I certainly thought it had. I had dropped the pole and careered down the stairs to the kitchen, but what had I done with the torch? I didn’t remember dropping it. I wouldn’t have dropped it. I’d have been scared that I’d break it. Then again, I wasn’t exactly thinking straight. When I heard the mobile’s ringtone everything else went out of my head except my need to answer it. Answer it and what? Did I really expect Kat to be at the other end of it? Was she yet another phantom wanting to pass me a celestial message?

  Then it occurred to me that maybe I’d taken the torch downstairs with me. Maybe it was sitting on the kitchen table. Well one thing was for sure – I was not going to go up that ladder to poke my head up into the loft space without a torch to give me a bit of light to look around. What would be the point?

  I picked up the pole and lifted the loft hatch, slamming it into place with more force than was necessary, then stomped down the stairs again.

  The torch wasn’t on the table. Nor was it on any of the worktops, on the sink or on the floor next to the chair where I’d fallen asleep.

  Where the fuck was it? I’d had it, I’d taken it from the bathroom cupboard. I’d had it in my left hand while the pole was in my right.

  In an anxiety-fuelled frenzy I rushed around the kitchen opening every single cupboard and slamming it shut when the object of my obsession wasn’t apparent. As I flung open the final cupboard and peered inside, seeing nothing but empty space I flopped down onto my backside in morose dejection. Where was it? Where could it be?

  And once again I put my head in my hands and wept.

  This time sleep didn’t come to take away my misery, I just cried until I couldn’t cry any more. Hardly manly, but that’s how it was, and I wish I could say it made me feel better – it didn’t. I felt alone, useless and scared.

  When I eventually dragged myself up onto my feet, I was light-headed to the point I had to grab hold of a chair to keep myself upright. I was so dog-damned weary. I’d slept away half the evening and even so my eyes were so heavy I wasn’t sure I would make it up the stairs before they drooped shut.

  I staggered around the kitchen, one hand on the worktop or wall, and I barely had the wherewithal to switch off the light as I clung onto the door frame for support. Each step of the stairs could have been a mile up the Eiger, the way I was feeling.

  When I reached the upstairs landing, the weight of my bladder reminded me I’d been on my way to the bathroom when I’d come across the open loft hatch. I could hardly be bothered, but if I didn’t go now it wouldn’t be long before I’d have to drag my sorry self out of bed unless I wanted to have a very messy accident.

  I did what I had to do and forced myself to wash my face and clean my teeth, avoiding looking in the mirror − I didn’t need to see my reflection to know I looked like shit − and shambled across the hallway to my room.

  I didn’t look up at the rectangular door in the ceiling as I passed beneath it. My head felt too heavy and, from the way I was feeling, should my nemesis come calling he would be doing me a favour when he shoved a knife into my heart or stove my head in as I slept. I was too bone-achingly weary to care.

  I nudged open my bedroom door, too tired to lift my hand to push against it, and it slowly swung open. I shuffled inside, the bed filling my vision. Lying on my pillow was a single pink carnation. I sank down onto the bed, lay down and rolled over to face the flower.

  ‘Krystal,’ I heard myself mutter from a very long way away and my eyes fluttered shut.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Kat and I were sitting at the kitchen table. She was wearing the flowery yellow shirt she’d had on the day she died. It was soaking wet, clinging to her. Her short black hair was plastered to her head. A bottle of Sir Peter’s Scotch was sitting on the table between us and she was running the tip of her forefinger around the rim of her glass while contemplating its contents.

  ‘You’re really not very good at any of this,’ she said, looking at me.

  A drop of water trickled down her nose, hung on its tip suspended there for a moment, before falling to splatter on the patch of skin between her breasts.

  ‘Oh, come on, Jim. Think about it, why don’t you?’ She put the glass down and leant forward, placing her palms on the table either side of it. She was still wearing her engagement ring, which I knew wasn’t right. She hadn’t been wearing it when they found her, she’d thrown it at me an hour or so earlier. ‘For God’s sake, Jim, do you really want to die?’

  ‘It’d be better than this.’

  ‘Typical,’ she said with a twist of her lavender-tinged lips, ‘when the going gets tough …’ She picked up the glass, glared at it and then her expression softened. ‘At least you’ve had the balls to try and kick one habit.’

  ‘It isn’t a habit.’

  ‘Hmm, it was becoming one.’

  ‘Kat—’

  She held up a hand stopping me. ‘No time.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘No time,’ she repeated. ‘What you have to do is look at the clues you’ve been given. Remember what you’ve seen and been told.’

  ‘Clues?’

  ‘She’s trying to tell you something and you must listen.’

  ‘Why doesn’t she speak to me? The reverend spoke to me, you’re speaking to me, why doesn’t she if she wants me to help her so much?’

  Kat very slowly shook her head, droplets falling from the spikes of her hair to patter down on the floor around her. ‘It’s not her who needs helping,’ she said, and her lips curled into that really sad half-smile she used to give me towards the end. ‘It’s too late for her,’ and she got to her feet, ‘but I’m sort of hoping it isn’t too late for you.’

  Then it was as though she was freezing, turning to ice or glass; she shimmered and glimmered and with a whoosh collapsed into a sea of water that washed across the kitchen floor, lapping against the walls and kitchen cupboards before disappearing in a hiss of steam that filled the room with clouds of mist.

  And I was walking through the graveyard surrounded by swirling murk. Now and then I would catch a glimpse of red in the distance or hear a child’s laughter, but however quickly I chased after her I could never get any closer.

  ‘Krystal,’ I called. ‘Krystal – wait for me.’

  She started to sing. ‘Now I lay me down to sleep …’ and a huge grey figure loomed out of the ground in front of me, his enraged face filling my vision as his hands grabbed for me, his meaty fingers clutching
at my throat, his thumbs pressing hard against my larynx.

  I tore at his hands as he pushed me down, down, down into an open grave and as it all turned black I could see the blurred outline of a shadowy figure in red floating above us. ‘Now I lay me down …’ and her voice faded away along with my vision.

  I have never smoked in my life, but I’d have done anything for a cigarette to calm my tattered nerves. A stiff one would have been better, but I immediately pushed that thought away. Kat was right, it was a slippery road I wasn’t ever taking again.

  The clock said it was half past ten and I could only hope this wasn’t the beginning of the same old pattern I’d gone through before, night after night of nightmares. I supposed I at least remembered this one – though I wasn’t sure this was a good thing. I didn’t want to remember Kat that way. A pale, cold corpse, still wet from the river they had pulled her from.

  That day, just two weeks before our wedding, we had argued, she stormed out, two hours later I opened the front door to grim-faced police officers.

  The coroner said it was suicide. Her mother and friends said I’d driven her to it and, to be honest, I’d believed them – until now. Or was it that I was just clinging onto the hope that Emma was right when she told me it was an accident? Right – now I wanted to believe it was possible to receive messages from the dead, but only when it suited me.

  I got up to make myself a coffee. I’d have to risk it’d keep me awake half the night, though better that than more nightmares. As the kettle boiled, I stared at the steamed-up window, glad that it was preventing me seeing out into the garden. I gave a shiver as I remembered the figure I’d thought I’d seen loom up at me at Emma’s, the same figure as in my dream. The man in grey.

  Each time I’d seen his face, but I hadn’t – not really. Not so I could describe it, anyway. It was somehow misshapen. No − smeared. It was like someone had painted his face then smudged it with their thumb. When I’d seen it through the window it had been distorted by the glass and maybe that’s why in the dream it was unclear. All I could definitely say about his description was his face was twisted with rage.