The Stalker

by Sarah Alderson

I’m about to answer but Liam suddenly leaps to his feet.

  ‘What is it?’ I ask, turning to look in the same direction as him.

  He shakes his head, a frown appearing between his eyes. ‘I thought I saw something.’

  ‘What?’ I ask, peering past him. The bonfire throws out a halo of light for about twenty feet but beyond that perimeter it’s pure darkness: a void. I can’t see anything.

  He shakes his head and gives a nervous laugh. ‘It was probably just an animal.’

  He keeps scanning the beach though, frowning, and I do too, wondering what it could have been. After a while he turns to me, forcing a smile. ‘Shall we go back inside?’ he says.

  The bonfire is still going, blazing brightly, but I agree and follow him back to the house, glancing once over my shoulder to scan the beach, wondering what it was that he could have seen. I think back to the shadow of a man I thought I saw yesterday on the beach. I didn’t mention it to Liam at the time, and I don’t want to mention it now as he might wonder why I didn’t say anything yesterday. ‘What do you think you saw?’ I ask him as he opens the front door and ushers me inside.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he mumbles, his face dark.

  Once inside the cottage, Liam locks all the doors and then goes around checking all the windows. He’s acting very spooked and I can feel my own adrenaline starting to pump.

  When he’s done, he turns to me and smiles, though it seems a little forced, as though he’s trying not to worry me. ‘I’m sure it was nothing,’ he says. ‘Probably a fox.’

  I offer a reassuring smile in return. Liam takes my hand and pulls me into the living room. I stand beside him as he crouches down and lights a fire in the wood-burning stove. The wood is dry and crackles to life as soon as Liam drops the match. He shuts the door of the stove and stands up. He takes hold of me by my hips, and gives me a look that undoes me, making my whole body quiver in response; then he turns me gently around, so I’m facing away from him. I suppose he’s convinced himself that it really was an animal he saw, and I wish I could do the same; but I just can’t stop my mind from wandering, even as Liam slowly unzips my dress, pausing to kiss between my shoulder blades.

  A shiver runs up my spine. He unclasps my bra and then slides the dress off, so it pools around my feet, then he turns me back around to face him. My hands fly self-consciously across my body, but I know how much he likes to see me, so I move them to my sides, and he smiles encouragement. He eases off the straps of my bra and I let it fall on top of my dress.

  He stands back and his gaze sweeps every inch of me. Goosebumps chase trails across my skin and he draws me nearer, kissing the tender place below my collarbone and then my neck. I tip my head back and draw a tight breath, resting my hands on his shoulders as he kisses down my chest towards my stomach. My fingernails dig into his shoulders.

  He pauses to take off his shirt and then he pulls me to my knees and lays me down on the rug. He works out a lot and he’s muscled and broad and when he rolls on top of me his weight presses down on me like a rock.

  ‘Do you like that?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes,’ I whisper in his ear.

  ‘Is that good?’ he asks now, kissing the inside of my thigh.

  ‘Mmm,’ I say, squeezing my eyes shut.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ Liam yells, leaping to his feet.

  I sit up in fright. ‘What?’

  Liam’s on his feet now, staring at the window. ‘There was someone there. Looking in the window.’ His voice sounds strange, strained, and he looks terrified, as though he’s seen a ghost.

  ‘What?’ I say in alarm, sitting up and covering my body with my arms. I look at the window, but I can’t see anything but sheer blackness. We could be floating in space.

  Liam crosses to the window and looks out. ‘There was someone there,’ he says. ‘I swear to god.’

  I yank on my dress, disturbed at the idea someone was looking in and saw me naked, and then go and join him at the window.

  ‘It’s too dark,’ I say, staring out at what looks like an abyss. Nothing is visible; not the loch nor the starlight, only a faint glow from the beach where the bonfire is dying.

  A large, dark shadow passes suddenly in front of the flames, and we both jump back from the window in fright.

  ‘There!’ he shouts. ‘Did you see it?

  I nod. ‘What was that?’ I ask, gripping his arm.

  Liam shakes his head. ‘I’m going outside to check.’

  I grab his arm even harder, pulling him back. ‘No,’ I say. ‘Don’t.’

  He gives me a sardonic look, one eyebrow raised. ‘Laura, I’m a police officer, remember?’

  I nod. Of course, I remember, but I don’t find it all that reassuring.

  ‘You stay here,’ he tells me as he pulls his trousers and shirt back on.

  Anxiety buzzes in my sternum. I follow him into the kitchen where he stops to pull on his boots. ‘Do you really need to go?’ I ask anxiously.

  ‘Yes.’ He crosses to the back door. ‘Lock it after I go out. I’ll knock three times when I come back,’ he tells me.

  I nod and then he’s gone, out the door and swallowed up by the darkness. With a shaking hand I bolt the door behind him and then stand in the kitchen motionless, ears cocked for any noises outside, but I can’t hear a thing. The house is as still and silent as a crypt.

  He’s gone a long time and my anxiety builds with each passing second. Where is he? Has something happened to him? My nerves are electrified and I’m so on edge that when I hear a light thudding sound coming from inside the cottage my heart almost smashes through my ribcage, only relaxing when I realise it’s just the fire. A burning log must have fallen against the grate. I walk back into the front room and glance towards the window where Liam saw the face.

  I yank the curtain across and then do the same to all the other windows. I hate the feeling that we’re being watched.

  Another minute passes and I start biting my nails. What if Liam doesn’t come back? But then I hear a rapid knock knock knock knock on the back door and run to open it.

  Liam enters.

  ‘Was there anyone out there?’ I ask.

  He shakes his head, turning to lock the back door. ‘No, not that I could see.’ A deep frown line runs between his eyes, but then he shakes it off and forces a smile. ‘It was probably nothing.’

  I nod, but I don’t believe it. And I’m not sure he does either, because why would he lock the doors if it was nothing? And the shape of the shadow that passed in front of the fire seemed far too big to be an animal. Still, I don’t want to push it.

  ‘Shall we go upstairs to bed?’ Liam asks, his tone light but forced.

  I nod, though I’m not sure I’ll be able to get a wink of sleep. Seeing that I’m troubled, Liam puts his hand on my shoulder to reassure me. ‘It’s all that talk of ghosts,’ he says. ‘It must have got to us. Don’t worry though, I’m here. I’ll never let anything happen to you, you know that.’

  I give him a grateful smile.

  Liam checks once again that the front door is locked, and then we head upstairs. We shut the bedroom door and undress quickly. I pull on a nightdress and Liam gets into bed in his boxers.

  We lie in bed together in silence, my head on his chest. I can feel the tension in his body, the muscles rigid, his heart pounding. Finally, when Liam thinks I’m sleeping, he eases his arm from under me and slips out of bed.

  I lie awake with my eyes shut, listening to Liam in the bathroom as he moves about, my ears pricked. I can hear an owl hooting in the distance, and something scuttling across the roof; a squirrel or a rat maybe. I’m not afraid of animals though, not even the Pitbulls and the Rottweilers that I used to sometimes have to deal with at work. You could always put a muzzle on them after all. And most animals are predictable and easy to read.

  I hear Liam turn on the shower and listen to the water run. My heart is hammering as though I’ve just run a race. I feel a nervous anticipation that I can’t quite put a finge
r on. The shower cuts out and a few moments later Liam comes back into the bedroom with a towel wrapped around his waist.

  He climbs into bed and rolls against my back, putting his arm around me, welding us together. I steady my breathing and listen to the owl hoot. Liam falls asleep almost instantly, but I lie awake for the longest time, unable to sleep. Suddenly, a faint scraping sound, like something scratching glass, makes me freeze. My heart starts to hammer wildly, and I look over at Liam, but he’s still sleeping soundly beside me.

  I crane to hear and the noise comes again, a screech like nails on a chalkboard, as though someone is trying to cut through glass and get inside the cottage. White-knuckled, I grip the sheet, too afraid to move. Surely it’s just a branch tapping the window somewhere downstairs, or the wind rattling the glass. After a moment it stops and my clenched muscles relax.

  I still don’t sleep though. My heart refuses to settle and every time I try to close my eyes they snap open, staring into the dark void of the room, my mind conjuring monsters. Eventually, exhaustion and the darkness overwhelm me and I slip into a dream-filled sleep.

  The Stalker

  They were making love in front of the fire. She was naked, her pale skin painted rose gold with the flames, like she was a lacquered ornament. When I saw her, I wanted to take her in my hands, to hold her and marvel at her, and also to smash her to the stone floor. I wanted to annihilate her. And him. For touching her like that.

  It made me so angry seeing them together. It made me think of all I’d once had and all I’d lost. It reminded me of how once my heart had been filled with love, but now was broken. It made me think of all the betrayal I’d suffered. And it made me want to fall to my knees and sob at the injustice and the pain of it.

  But as I stood there, locked outside in the cold, watching them together inside the cottage, her with head thrown back, her delicate white throat on display, groaning as he pressed into her, I was filled with a searing white-hot rage. I wanted nothing more than to burst in and kill them both.

  I backed away from the window before I could be seen, deciding that there was no point in rushing things. I needed to be careful.

  I’d take my time with them; let the rage simmer before I brought it to a boil.

  Chapter Ten

  Day Four

  I jerk awake from a nightmare involving a prowling monster hunting me in the dark. A dull grey light fills the room. It’s not yet dawn, and when I creep from bed, leaving Liam asleep, and head downstairs I see that Venus, the morning star, is still visible in the light of daybreak. I watch it through the kitchen window as it fades away and finally disappears.

  In the cold light of day the nightmares from last night and the fear of an intruder melt away. I play around with the coffee maker – thankfully it’s automatic – and try to figure out how to use the steam wand attached to it. By the time I’ve located the manual in the drawer and made the perfect froth for a cappuccino, Liam is awake and has joined me in the kitchen.

  ‘You’re up early,’ he says, kissing my cheek.

  I hand him a cup of coffee. He notices the heart shape I’ve tried to draw in the froth with cinnamon and laughs. He takes a sip and nods in appreciation. ‘That’s a fairly decent coffee. Maybe you could train as a barista. Though,’ he adds, ‘it would be a waste of your talents.’

  I’m about to ask him what he wants for breakfast – I spied all the ingredients for an English breakfast in the fridge and my appetite is stirring and demanding bacon – but he’s already heading towards the front door. ‘Shall we take it outside, sit on the beach?’ he suggests.

  His fear seems to have dissipated overnight. He must have resolved in his mind that it wasn’t a person he saw after all; definitely an owl. That, or he’s pretending in order to make me feel better. Either way, I decide to go along with it.

  I nod, pick up my own cup of tea and hurry after him. He undoes the dead bolts on the front door, and we step outside to find that the morning is fresh and mainly clear, with only a few clouds skidding along overhead.

  ‘Still no sign of that stor—,’ Liam begins to say, with a slight scoff, but he trails off, his gaze falling to the path in front of us. I follow it and see there’s dirt traipsed all over the flagstones. Then I see the geraniums in the flowerbeds are crushed underfoot, as though someone has stomped through them.

  ‘What the hell?’ Liam mutters under his breath. He walks over to take a closer look. There are footprints in the soil right in front of the window – the same window he thought he saw someone staring through last night.

  ‘Oh my god,’ I whisper, looking down at them. ‘There was someone looking in.’ It wasn’t an animal, and we weren’t imagining things. ‘Someone else is here,’ I whisper in shock. ‘On the island.’

  Liam bends to take a closer look. ‘Looks like a man’s eight or nine. Boots not trainers,’ he mutters. He stands up and stares at the window. ‘He must have stood here last night, looking in at us.’

  I swallow, feeling ill at the thought, and starting to shake with fear. I can’t stop staring at the footprints – irrefutable proof that we aren’t alone on the island.

  Liam glances around, following the tracked dirt down the path. ‘He ran off via the beach.’

  ‘Look!’ I say, pointing at the window, noticing something. Someone has etched random markings into the glass; symbols that don’t make sense, like some ancient runes.

  ‘Why would someone do that?’ I ask, puzzled.

  ‘Was it there before?’

  I shake my head. ‘No. I would have noticed when I drew the curtains last night.’

  Liam presses his fingernail to the glass. ‘It’s been done from the outside. With a knife or something sharp.’

  I think about the sound I heard last night – of something scraping against glass – and feel a chill all over my body. ‘What should we do?’ I ask, looking to him for answers.

  ‘Let’s go back inside,’ he says.

  I glance around. Is whoever did this watching us right now? I feel exposed, as naked as I was last night when someone – this same someone – spied on us through the window.

  ‘We’re meant to be on the island by ourselves,’ Liam rages, once we’re back inside and he’s shut and locked the door behind us. ‘We’re meant to have total privacy, and instead we’ve got some sicko pervert stalking us, watching us have sex.’

  He puts his coffee down on the table and starts to pace the front room.

  ‘Maybe it was some kids from the mainland?’ I suggest tentatively, chewing on my thumbnail with worry. ‘Or maybe someone’s living on the island and they forgot to tell us.’

  Liam stops pacing. ‘Where? Where would anyone be living? There’s no other houses!’

  I shake my head and shrug. ‘I don’t know.’ But I think about the castle. Wouldn’t that be the obvious place for someone to be living – or squatting?

  ‘And why wouldn’t they have warned us? And who the hell sneaks up on a place at night and spies through the window?’ Liam mutters, marching back and forth in front of the fire.

  ‘Could it be a groundsman or something like that?’ I ask. ‘One of the cleaners perhaps?’

  ‘There is no groundsman. And anyway, if there was, why wouldn’t they come during the daytime?’ he argues. ‘They could knock on the door and say hello. Why lurk in the dark, spying on people? They could be arrested for this.’

  I perch on the arm of the sofa and think about the person watching us last night. Was the same person following us in the forest earlier in the day? Or was I imagining that?

  ‘It could be a treasure hunter.’

  ‘What?’

  Liam nods at the history book. I remember what he said about the monks burying treasure and our silly idea of going to look for it. ‘You think someone’s here on the island, trying to dig up buried gold?’ I ask.

  Liam shrugs. ‘Why not? Maybe they’re trying to frighten us off the island so they can keep up their search.’

  He star
ts pacing again, his fists clenching and unclenching with frustration. Then he stops abruptly and looks at me. ‘Didn’t the boatman mention a satellite phone? For emergencies?’

  I nod.

  Liam looks around the room. ‘I wonder where it is.’

  We search for it, Liam rummaging through the built-in cupboards in the hallway and under the stairs, and me looking in the kitchen. ‘Who will you call?’ I ask as we search.

  ‘The housekeeper, I suppose. Though I don’t know if I’ve even got her number. We just communicated by email. I could find it though. Worst comes to the worst I can call the pub back on the mainland, someone might know her.’

  ‘I’ve found it,’ I call out suddenly, pulling what looks like a large TV remote out of a drawer by the cooker. I hand it to Liam. ‘That’s it, isn’t it?’ I ask.

  It looks like a walkie-talkie. Liam takes it and searches for the on switch. He presses it but the phone stays dead in his hand.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I say as he keeps playing with the buttons.

  ‘It’s not working,’ he says, frustrated. ‘Damn it.’

  ‘That’s weird.’ I examine the packaging it came in. ‘It looks brand new.’

  ‘The battery must be dead,’ Liam says, sighing. ‘Does it have a charger?’ he asks.

  I search through the drawer. ‘No, I can’t see one.’

  ‘Why would you have a satellite phone with no charger? That’s ridiculous!’ He’s getting agitated.

  I keep searching through the other drawers, trying to find one. ‘Would it work with an iPhone charger?’

  Liam shakes his head. ‘No. It looks like it needs a special one.’

  He helps me search through the remaining drawers, but we come up empty-handed. ‘Damn,’ he says, letting out an angry sigh. ‘Maybe, we should see if we can get a mobile phone signal somewhere on the island.’

  ‘The boatman said there wasn’t any service out here.’

  ‘There might be if we can get high enough. On the cliffs perhaps.’

  I hesitate. ‘But what if … whoever it is is out there? What if they follow us?’