Silent Treatment

by David James

  She went round the house again, carefully and slowly, trying to creep up on anyone if they had already got in the house. She thought about going into the loft, but she felt uneasy just thinking about it so she made sure the bolt was securely closed on the hatch and hurried down stairs.

  She stealthily and quietly walked around the whole house again, peering suddenly around walls.

  But she didn’t catch anyone. Maybe she had got home in time.

  She tried to relax. She reassured herself that she had done a good job and she felt safer now. No one could get in.

  She walked down the stairs and cautiously into the hallway. She was surprised that the house was now getting quite dark, when she had got home from the woods it had still been light. She was losing track of the passage of time now. But at least she was safe, for now.

  And then she heard it. And she froze.

  There was a rhythmic banging sound coming from the front of the house. Surely she hadn’t left a window open?

  The banging noise sped up until Sarah had to cover her ears to stop it penetrating into her mind.

  And then it stopped.

  She slowly uncovered her ears and let her hands fall by her side.

  Sarah.

  She put her hands back over her ears, but nothing could block the sound out.

  Sarah.

  The voice sounded angry now. What had she done to annoy it? She crushed her hands into her head to block out the sound and felt herself sliding down the wall with her back pressed against it until she was crouched on the floor trying to stop herself sobbing.

  The letter box in the front door slowly opened. Her eyes were transfixed on it as the hinge opened completely. She so wanted to look away but couldn’t.

  And then she saw it and it took all her effort not to let out a scream. But she didn’t want to alert it to her presence. And she was back to being a child again and the monsters had returned and she didn’t have her father to protect her.

  The director turned the car into the entrance to the park to meet Sir Terrence. He had never been here before in the dark and he noticed that the trees and bushes that looked so inviting in the light, now took on altogether more sinister forms.

  It didn’t help his mood.

  He was already feeling anxious and the last thing he really needed was to meet Sir Terrence. But he knew it needed to be done.

  He saw the car parked ahead of him and he parked and clambered out to approach Sir Terrence's car.

  He peered in the front window expecting to see him there. But it was empty. He stood back and was about to look around the other side of the car when a dark shape suddenly emerged from the gloom.

  ‘Sir Terrence,’ said the director, trying to recover his composure.

  ‘Thank you for coming,’ he replied. ‘We can talk here inside the car.’

  They settled inside the car, the director noted the plush interior, it made his own seem decidedly budget by comparison.

  ‘I just thought I would let you know that I am worried about Sarah.’

  Sir Terrence didn’t respond.

  ‘I’m not sure she is coping particularity well.’

  Sir Terrence nodded slowly and said ‘And this troubles you does it?’

  The director was taken aback by the tone of the question.

  ‘Well, of course it does.’

  There was another pause before sir Terrence said ‘How is the new treatment going?’

  The director refocused his mind and said ‘The children seemed to have gone even more into their shells. The drugs that Susan has tried haven’t produced the effect we wanted.’

  He thought that Sir Terrence would start to criticise him for the lack of progress. But he remained calm as he said ‘These things can take a while to achieve the result we want.’

  The director was relieved that he seemed to be supporting their work and if there was any hint of criticism in his voice then he couldn’t detect it.

  The director felt that he needed to say more about Sarah, it felt as if Sir Terrence had simply ignored what he had said. ‘I went round to see her.’

  This caught his attention and he turned to look directly at him and said ‘And what did you find?’

  The director thought about his visit to Sarah’s house. ‘Well, I didn’t manage to actually see Sarah. She must have been out.’

  Eventually Sir Terrence replied ‘Maybe it was for the best that she was separated from the children, before it went too far.’

  The director was struggling to discern what Sir Terrence was saying. Or rather he was finding it hard to reconcile what he was saying with what he felt he was meaning.

  Sir Terrence looked ahead out of the car window and said in an eerily calm voice ‘I don’t think we will need these little meetings of ours from now on.’

  The director was too surprised to reply. He had always thought that he was needed to allow Sir Terrence to know how the treatment of the children was progressing. But moments later, he realised why he had said it.

  ‘I have a couple of other sources available and I can get information directly from Susan as well from now on. I’m sure you will be pleased that you won’t have this distraction anymore. But I would like you to keep an eye on Sarah for us.’

  And that was it.

  The director was now effectively being cut out of the treatment of the children. In the institute that he thought he was running. He replied in the only way he could ‘If you think that is best.’

  Sir Terrence nodded and said ‘Give my regards to your wife for me.’

  And with that the director was dismissed.

  He climbed out of the car and seconds later Sir Terrence started his car and disappeared, leaving the director standing all alone, in the dark.

  Chapter Thirty Two

  Hi Ben,

  Hope everything is well. Haven't heard from you for a few days and just wondered how you got on?

  Things here are a little strange. Where to start? Well, the few days off aren’t proving to be as relaxing as I had hoped. And I don’t think I will ever see the children again, and that frightens me as I have my suspicions about what Susan is up to.

  Don’t mean to sound too dramatic, but I really could do with hearing from you.

  Sarah

  She had tried to make the message light, in stark contrast to how she was feeling. But as she looked at it again she couldn’t help feeling that she sounded more than a little desperate – which she was – and more than a little unhinged. But it was how she felt, as her finger hovered over the send key she wondered if it would have the effect of making him get in touch, or make him avoid her.

  She pressed send.

  She closed the laptop and made her way upstairs to the bedroom.

  As she walked past her old room, she saw that the door was open again and it said something about her state of mind that she wasn’t surprised. She knew she had shut it. She pushed the door slowly further open until she could see inside the room.

  The doll had moved.

  It was now positioned next to the bed; the bed she had spent most of her childhood sleeping in and the doll was now sitting upright on her old pillow, where she used to put it herself.

  She walked across the room, lay on top of the bed and picked up the doll – clasping it tightly to herself and half waited for her father to come into the room to comfort her.

  As she lay on the bed and looked around the room she was transported back to her childhood. Mostly happy memories. But they hadn't all been happy had they? There were dark moments, darker moments than a child should have. But she was through them now, her father had helped her, they couldn’t hurt her now.

  She closed her eyes and clutched the doll tightly.

  Sarah watched as she arose from the bed and walked out of the room and down the stairs. It was dark in the house. She walked towards the study but at the last moment veered away from the door and headed right down the corridor. She hadn't been down here for years and she wondered why sh
e was going down here.

  And then she could see the door ahead of her with its studded panels and large handle. She tried to stop herself going towards the door. She didn’t want to go there again. But her feet wouldn’t stop. She looked around her in panic, trying to grab at anything to stop herself going down the hallway. But everything she tried to grab hold of seemed too slippery to hold and the door began to loom in front of her. She tried to cry out for someone to help her, but she was alone in the house.

  And now she was stood in front of the door and the terror was rising within her. As she stood in front of the door she could feel the years melting away until she was fifteen years old again.

  Her hand reached out and started to turn the large ring of the door. She desperately wanted the door to remain shut, her mind was screaming ‘No!’, but she couldn’t stop her hand as it began to turn the handle slowly.

  It must be a dream. Why were her dreams betraying her like this? She didn’t want to see them again, why wouldn’t they leave her alone? She had done as she was told. She didn’t want to go back there again. But the door continued to open, swinging on the heavy hinges.

  She tried to force herself to wake up. But nothing could stop her now.

  The door was now swung fully open and from inside the room the shapes began to stir. Until, as if they had noticed her presence, they began to swirl and surge towards her until a face began to form. It looked directly at her and she screamed.

  And then her father was alongside her.

  She watched as he reached forward and began to close the door. The shapes seemed to fall back slightly, and slowly the door closed until it obscured them completely.

  She looked around, but she was alone now. She turned and fled up the stairs and back into her old room.

  She awoke with a start and sat bolt upright in bed. Her dream had left her with a feeling of dread. She had to shake her head to clear the horrifying images. She never wanted to close her eyes again, never wanted to sleep again. Her dreams had forced her to open that door again.

  As her mind began to clear slightly, her attention was drawn towards the sounds from her father’s bedroom that she normally slept in. She was finding it difficult to hear over the sound of her own heart thumping in her chest.

  There was silence now. She began to wonder if silence was all there had been and she had imagined the noises in a desperate attempt to distract her from the effects of the dream.

  She sat in the silence for what felt like an age until she heard the soft sound of footsteps down the hall. She counted the steps. Twelve, thirteen, fourteen…

  She knew that when her counting reached twenty or so then whoever it was would have reached the end of the hallway and would be down the stairs and gone in a few seconds.

  Did she really want to look?

  She screwed up her courage and slowly swung her legs out of the bed and crept silently across the room. She squeezed her head through the half open doorway and slowly the hallway was revealed to her.

  She immediately clasped her hand tight against her mouth to stifle a scream as she saw a figure starting to descend the stairs.

  But the biggest shock was to come.

  She recognised the clothes of the figure. He always wore those types of clothes.

  And they belonged to her deceased father.

  The figure disappeared down the stairs and for a second she thought about chasing after it. But she was still frozen to the spot.

  All was silent again. She stood there for several minutes until she realised that she had to move. She looked across at her father’s bedroom, the door was slightly ajar. She calculated that she could make it across to the room in a few steps and shut the door behind her. The door was the only bedroom with a lock on it.

  She took a deep breath and leapt across the chasm that was the hallway and closed the door behind her, locking it as silently as she could.

  She waited to hear any sounds.

  The only sound was her own heavy breathing and pounding heart.

  She walked slowly and carefully towards her bed. On her pillow was a note. She reached forward, picked it up and read it.

  Shara.

  Stay safe Shara. Stay here with me. We can be together like before.

  Don’t trust the outsiders, they are not what they seem. Friends are no substitute for family. Don’t trust him. You are safe here. We don’t want people poking into our business now do we Shara?

  It’s your move.

  She put the note down. The note was partly crumpled and the writing wasn’t entirely clear but she was sure that she recognised her father’s handwriting. It seemed that she had made the right decision returning to the house, he had confirmed that.

  She suddenly felt that she never wanted to leave this house. She felt safe here.

  Sarah felt the urge to run after the figure she had seen. She stood up, opened the door without worrying about making any noise and rushed down the corridor and started to bound down the stairs.

  As she reached the hallway she could see light under the door of the study and as she stopped running she thought she could hear sounds from in the study. She steadied herself, reached in her pocket for the key and slowly unlocked the door.

  As Sarah entered the study, she looked to the right and could see that the chess piece had been moved. But her attention was drawn to the desk with her father’s papers on. She had left them in a specific order and she could see clearly that they had been moved. As she approached the desk she could see that there were gaps where files had been removed and reordered.

  As she sat down in the chair, she wondered if her father had wanted to look at his old papers one more time. She couldn't think of any other answer.

  She sat there for a while trying to make sense of everything. Her mind was scrambled and she felt weak and tired. She had gained comfort from the note she had found upstairs and she felt comfortable and safe in the house. He had told her that it was best to stay here, and after her visit to the wood she felt the same.

  But what about Ben? What about the children? She felt that her only hope for the children lay with Ben. She could hide away from the world here in her father’s house, but she knew she wasn’t helping the children that way. And her heart sank at the thought of how the children were now being treated at the institute by Susan Brannigan, Helen and John, and the director.

  She stood up, walked towards the door, absent-mindedly pausing at the chess board. She could see that her father had made his move. As she looked, she realised that she wasn’t in a good position, she had very little manoeuvre in the game. She picked up a piece and hovered it over the table, unsure which move to make.

  Chapter Thirty Three

  Sarah slept fitfully again, but she wished she hadn’t. Her dreams were a strange and at times terrifying mix of her father, the children, the door and her doll which seemed to have somehow come to life. She was glad as she woke up in the early hours of the morning. She would rather face the reality than the anxieties of her dream world.

  But though her mind was still clouded by the effects of the dream she knew that the conflict within her was still there, nothing had changed. Her father’s warning and the voice of the director were battling on one side against the thought of Ben and the children on the other. As she lay in bed, the thought of staying in the safety of the house indefinitely was winning.

  She forced herself out of the comforting bed and made her way downstairs. As she looked down at her clothes she realised she had apparently lost all interest in her appearance, there was no one to see her anyway and at this moment she was glad.

  She stood in the hallway and her head turned involuntarily and looked in the direction of the studded door to the room. She could feel herself being drawn towards it. As she looked she thought she could see the door beginning to open. She shook her head to clear it and looked back.

  The door was closed.

  With a force of will, she managed to wrench her attention away and focus on
her father’s study, and she started to walk towards the study, her mind still blurred.

  Sarah.

  She froze.

  Sarah.

  She put her hands tightly over her ears and the voice stopped. She was relieved, it at least meant that they weren’t coming from inside her head. Unless they had just stopped momentarily and would start again any second and from inside her head. She stood there with her hands still tightly against her ears.

  Slowly she began to remove her hands form her ears.

  Sarah.

  The voice sounded insistent.

  And then there was a loud banging sound that she would hear whether she had her hands over her ears or not. The sound was coming from the front of the house and she slowly turned her head towards the front door.

  There was a shadow against the coloured glass of the door. The shadow moved and the banging sound returned.

  Sarah are you okay?

  And she recognised the voice.

  She walked slowly towards the door, unlocked the first lock, removed the second bolt and tentatively opened the door just enough to see through.

  The director had been worried about Sarah. He knew he had said that she should take as much time as she liked, but it had been several days now and he had heard nothing from her. Sir Terrence’s reaction had really shocked him, perhaps Sarah was too far below him for him to be concerned. But it had seemed to be something else as well.

  As he stood at the door, he was about to give up knocking when he saw a shadow move behind the door and he listened as the locks were undone.

  The sight that greeted him shocked him and filled him with despair. It was still Sarah, but it wasn’t the smart professional Sarah that he had last seen at the institute. Her clothes were dishevelled but it was the look in her eyes that was the most shocking. She looked almost haunted.

  ‘Sarah, I’m sorry to disturb you, is everything okay?’

  Sarah looked back at the director, she was relieved to see him, though she quickly wondered what she must look like to him. She managed to say ‘I’m fine,’ though neither of them believed it.