The Resident

by Francis Cottam

  About the Book

  Every year, three million single women in America move into an apartment for the first time. Few of them change the locks.

  Juliet Devereau can’t believe her luck: after weeks of looking for a place to live, she’s found a beautiful spacious apartment overlooking Brooklyn Bridge. It almost seems too good to be true.

  It is… Over the weeks, a chilling sense of being watched stalks Juliet. Strange sounds wake her in the night, the mirror in the bathroom trembles, and doors she thought shut are open. Then the silhouette of a man standing in her living room makes her realise that she’s not alone in there. But what’s haunting her is far more terrifying than a malevolent spirit; it’s alive, strong and obsessed. Suddenly Juliet is caught up in a deadly game of cat and mouse, and there’s no guarantee that she’ll come out alive…

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Copyright

  About the Author

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Version 1.0

  Epub ISBN 9781446457535

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  Published by Arrow Books in association with Hammer 2011

  2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

  Text Copyright © Francis Cottam, 2011

  The Resident Motion Picture Films © Resident Productions LLC

  Francis Cottam has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  First published in Great Britain in 2011 by

  Arrow Books in association with Hammer

  Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,

  London SW1V 2SA

  www.rbooks.co.uk

  Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk/offices.htm

  The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 9780099556251

  Francis Cottam lives in Kingston-upon-Thames. After a career in men’s magazines, he is now a full-time novelist.

  Prologue

  CROUCHED IN THE darkness, he could hear his own breath quickening as he watched the scene in front of him. He knew what was coming next; he’d seen it countless times before, but it never failed to excite him.

  She undid her bra, and he stared avidly at her pert little breasts, until, as she pulled down her panties, his attention was drawn to the downy pelt of hair between her legs. Lowering herself into the bathtub she began to soap her breasts; the white suds were astonishing in contrast against the dark buds of her nipples. She was humming, and his head was filled with the sound of her soft voice, the splash of the water and the buzz of excitement in his ears that was growing louder and louder. He shuddered as a thrill of shock so sudden and great it was almost seismic ran through him.

  Suddenly a hand gripped his neck with the rough implacable strength of a workbench vice. The shock of the attack and a sudden overwhelming sense of shame, made him lose control of his bowels. The foul stench made him gag, as the grip on his neck tightened.

  A voice murmured intimately against his ear. ‘We should leave now. We should go before the respectable people on the other side of the wall detect the stink of a pervert’s shit.’

  One

  JULIET DEVEREAU ARRIVED home shattered and bruised – literally – from her day at work. Even though ER could be volatile at the best of times, it was rare for a doctor to be injured on the job. Drunk patients were unpredictable, their relatives sometimes worse, but the staff at Williamsburg hospital were protected by security and cameras; so she’d never expected the blow when it came.

  Standing shakily outside her front door, Juliet fumbled in her pocket for the key. She felt pretty nauseous, to tell the truth. She was dizzy and her head pounded with dull, rhythmic hammer blows and there was the bitter taste of bile at the back of her throat. She thought she might feel better if she gave in to the strong temptation to puke.

  She would do that when she got inside. The home she shared with her husband, Jack, was a neat, half-timbered house in the suburbs outside New York. It had a small manicured front garden with a bright green lawn, painted picket fence and twin rows of neatly planted perennials. A puddle of vomit would do nothing to enhance its general appeal.

  Juliet took a couple of deep breaths; the trick was to try to concentrate her gaze on a single object until it gained clarity. She stared at their house number, seven, described in a brass figure screwed to their door. It didn’t work; the brass reflected the sunlight from behind her back into her eyes in a way that made her wince. She blinked and steadied her door key using both hands and finally it scraped and slid into the slot.

  Juliet thought back over the past few hours. Who would have thought such a sick guy could pack such a punch? He’d weighed at least three hundred pounds and the bits of him that weren’t bone and sinew were all muscle. He had come in running a high fever, complaining that he was hot and sick and that he felt floppy and listless.

  ‘Jesus,’ he said, ‘the lights in here are bright. It’s hurting my eyes.’ He shaded them with one enormous, trembling hand. ‘Could I trouble one of you people for a drink? I’d kill for a glass of water.’

  He was displaying the classic symptoms of vi
ral meningitis. He had taken ill at the gym and had staggered into the hospital under his own steam. But shortly after he arrived, he started to lapse in and out of consciousness. It took four burly orderlies to get him onto the gurney.

  ‘I’m going to give him a muscle relaxant,’ Juliet said, filling a syringe from a clear ampoule she had taken from the drugs cabinet.

  One of the nurses frowned. ‘Why not just turn him on his front and go for the lumbar puncture now?’ she said.

  It was a fair question; you had to be quick in the treatment of meningitis and the analysis from the lumbar puncture would let them know exactly what they were dealing with. But the situation was complicated by the patient’s physique.

  ‘Look at him. He’s rigid with pain,’ Juliet pointed out. ‘The guy has to be a body builder. This is steroid-fed muscle and there’s a strong likelihood the needle will break before we extract any spinal fluid. It’s a tricky procedure at the best of times. Tissue this dense won’t puncture easily. His neck has to measure more than twenty inches and we need a clean sample, not a broken probe. What we really need to do before we do anything else is to take some of the tension out of him. We need to soften him up.’

  The patient was lying on his back, his chest rising and falling frantically, his face glossy with sweat. Juliet pulled back the sleeve of the gown they had put him in and cleaned an area of skin with a swab of disinfected cotton wool. The guy had little body fat and veins bunched like the lines of a railroad junction from the inside of the wrist up. Juliet popped the syringe point into a track just below the joint of his arm. The drug she was administering was quick-acting. In minutes, his muscles would relax and he would be ideally prepped for the procedure they had planned. She depressed the plunger steadily with her thumb.

  It might have been a defensive reflex or it might simply have been a nervous spasm, but the patient’s free arm jerked suddenly up from the gurney and the club of his fist collided with a sickening crack against her left temple.

  ‘Jesus, Juliet …’ The shocked gasp of the nurse beside her was the last thing she heard as blackness washed over her.

  She came to lying on the floor with worried faces around her. ‘Juliet, are you OK? Can you get up?’ the nurse said.

  ‘I’m all right.’ Juliet put a shaky hand to her face; the skin was tight and puffy on her cheekbone. ‘How is he?’ She looked up briefly, but the bright light of the ER room caused stars to explode in her head. ‘He’s right,’ she said, hearing her own slurred voice in ringing ears. ‘The lights in here are painfully bright.’

  ‘Don’t worry about him right now, he’s being seen to. Come on, let’s get you lying down.’ One of the nurses lifted Juliet gently from the floor.

  ‘Seriously, guys, I’m fine. Just a bit shaken. You go back to him, I’ll just go and sit down.’

  ‘Oh no you don’t. You’re probably concussed, I’m taking you to Holstrom.’

  There was nothing Juliet could say, even if the blood in her mouth hadn’t made talking unpleasant. She grimaced as her tongue discovered a loosened molar. The area around her left eye was swelling rapidly, so that she winced with pain when she blinked; she’d have an ugly purplish circle of bruising to the socket tomorrow, but her range of facial movement was relatively unimpaired and the pain was not sufficiently intense so at least he had not broken any of her bones. Juliet was thankful for small mercies.

  Holstrom examined her himself. Her supervisor was regarded with something like awe among the junior house doctors, and there wasn’t much that escaped his notice. He gently but thoroughly studied her injuries.

  ‘You have a mild concussion, Juliet.’

  It wasn’t in Juliet’s nature to accept defeat, and no matter how much she respected Holstrom, she wasn’t about to accept it now, despite the pain in her head. ‘I don’t think I do.’

  ‘You’re contradicting me?’

  ‘Probably a bad idea,’ she said. ‘In career terms.’

  He chuckled. Maybe I’m concussed after all, she thought. She wouldn’t ordinarily have the nerve to crack so wise with her boss. Normally she would have exercised greater caution.

  ‘Go home,’ he said. ‘Rest. Sleep.’

  The treatment of concussion was tedious in the extreme: television wasn’t allowed; reading was forbidden. The idea was to sit in a darkened room and vegetate until you healed. ‘A couple of Demerol and I’ll be fine,’ she said, trying to butch it out.

  He shook his head, he wouldn’t budge. No surprise really, he ran a frontline resource with rigid efficiency, he couldn’t risk dazed staff treating their emergency admissions.

  ‘The hospital will pay your cab fare home. I would send you in an ambulance, but that’s a little ostentatious, don’t you think? Wouldn’t wish to set the neighbours’ curtains a-twitching.

  ‘Keep us informed about your recuperation but on no account rush back. I know how conscientious you are but that would be self-defeating, Juliet. You have suffered a severe blow to the head. Allow yourself the time you’d give anyone else to recover fully. Try treating yourself with the same compassion you show your patients.’

  She smiled at him. She was very fortunate; she could not imagine a kinder boss, nor one for whom she could have more personal admiration or professional respect. ‘I’ll do my best not to throw up on the cab ride home,’ she said, finally admitting that her boss was right.

  Stepping through the front door, the first thing in there she noticed was the smell of perfume. But then it was probably a weird symptom of the concussion. The brain was complex, knocked off-kilter it could run riot with sensory impressions.

  But the moment she closed the door behind her, she instinctively looked up the stairs. Had she heard a noise from up there? Yes, she had. It hadn’t been the hammer thud of her heartbeat through her concussed head and neither had it been the ringing that still afflicted her ears. It had been something caught and suppressed, a gasp or sob and it hadn’t been Jack’s, had it? It had been girlish, female. Silently taking the first step up the thickly carpeted flight, Juliet thought that it had sounded sexual in character.

  She knew she was wrong. She had to be wrong. Yet she climbed the stairs silently, holding her breath, fear clutched her stomach. Goose bumps were rising on her skin, coarsening it, she saw, in the light coming in through the open curtains on the landing above. All was silent up there now. But it seemed a fraught, concealing silence; someone hiding or lurking rather than being innocently absent from the home she shared with her husband.

  She was completely unprepared for the sight that met her as she opened the bedroom door. Her first thought was that the blow to the head had affected her more than she had thought, and had triggered this lurid hallucination.

  They hadn’t heard her. They weren’t lying looking sheepishly back at her when she pushed open the bedroom door and exposed them. Nor were they dressing hastily in clothes discarded carelessly about the bedroom. They were in the act, quite oblivious, her husband’s muscular back arched in pleasure. All Juliet could see of the woman was her knees gripping his waist and her splayed hair streaked and tawny against the pillow behind her husband.

  She looked away from them, flinching, touching the swelling around her eye with tentative fingers. And she looked back. Even when they sensed her presence and Jack paused in his rutting thrusts; even when the woman looked around his shoulder at Juliet with a start of surprise, she did not really believe it could be happening.

  Somehow she managed to stagger down the stairs, though how she managed that without her legs buckling she had no idea. She was wondering what to do, flapping like an injured bird, hopeful and incredulous, when Jack turned her by the shoulder and stood before her naked.

  She looked down and saw the wet coils of his pubic hair, slickened and matted with sex. She smelt the musky raw reek of it beneath the accents of the perfume that permeated the house. Her stomach heaved: she could no longer repress the nausea that had threatened to overwhelm her since the attack. Pushing past J
ack she rushed to the bathroom.

  When she emerged, teary-eyed and shaken, her husband was waiting for her, wrapped in a robe now, the physical evidence of what he’d done hidden. The smell muted slightly.

  ‘It’s adultery, Jack,’ she said. She heard herself slur out the words. Her mouth was swollen inside.

  He nodded. There were tears in his eyes, but he remained silent. But what could he have said? The woman he’d been fucking was still in their room.

  ‘In our home, Jack. In our bed. How could you?’

  He just looked at her. She could see that he had already regained something of himself. He was a self-possessed man in most situations and even now, his composure was coming back to him. He said, ‘What’s happened to your face?’

  She touched the side of her damaged eye with her hand. She felt the swelling there and the sore heat of it. ‘It’s nothing.’ She could feel the tears coming. ‘What have you done to me?’

  She was overcome with the irresistible urge to flee. She couldn’t bear him to see her like this. She was utterly broken by his betrayal, but she didn’t want him to know how completely destroyed she felt. Not with him standing there smelling of sex with another woman, and the woman in question upstairs, listening to them, no doubt taking some sort of perverse satisfaction in being involved in this tawdry little drama. So Juliet left.

  Their lawn sprinkler was on. A little rainbow of colour shivered through it as it showered the cut grass in the late August sunshine. Jack had remembered to switch it on. He had possessed the presence of mind to carry out that mundane chore on the day he had fucked someone else in their bed. It suggested to her that he had done this more than once. Of course he had; it was a part of his routine, like turning on the sprinkler and checking his email and sending her the witty text messages that made her smile in the precious moments of relaxation that punctuated her frenetic shifts at the hospital.