by Amy Cross
“Sarah -”
“But I do trust you,” she added. “I know you're not that kind of guy. I trust you implicitly, and I know you're more than capable of bumbling your way into a mess like this.” She leaned closer and kissed the side of his face. “I just hope this doesn't become a thing.”
“A thing?”
“I'm sure she'll turn up,” she continued. “It doesn't sound like she really knew those guys anyway. I bet you're right, she's probably some kind of flighty girl who moves on and doesn't think about the people she leaves behind. Still...” She paused for a moment. “You should be careful who you spend time with. She could have been dangerous. She could have been some kind of drug addict.”
“She wasn't,” he replied. “I could tell.”
“The kids thought they heard a noise from the basement last night,” she told him. “We took a look, it's filthy down there, but I'm pretty sure I'd have noticed if there had been a girl named Hannah down there.”
“You went into the basement?” he asked, clearly alarmed.
“Have you seen the mess the previous occupants left? You should send them the bill to get it cleaned out.”
“I'll do it myself,” he replied, taking a step back. “Don't go down there again. It might not be safe.”
“But honey -”
“I'll clean it up,” he continued, “but you're right, it's dirty, God knows what's down there. Promise me that you and the kids won't go down again. I think there are rats, too. They might bite.”
“Fine, I promise.”
“I'll get started right now,” he said, heading to the sink and starting to fill a bucket with water. “Why don't you take the kids out to the beach again? I know we were going to stay until tomorrow, but maybe we should head off tonight? I don't know if I really fancy spending any more time here.”
“And what are you going to do with the place once we've left? Rent it out?”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“You can't just leave it empty.”
“Can't I?”
“John -”
“Can you just take the kids out?” he snapped, turning to her. “Please, Sarah, I...” His voice trailed off for a moment, before he sighed and headed back over to her. “Please. I'm sorry, this place is just getting to me, that's all.”
“There's a carnival on the seafront tonight,” she told him. “I promised the kids we could go.”
“But -”
“And then we'll leave first thing in the morning, okay? I can tell it's not good for you to be here, so we'll leave tomorrow and then we don't ever have to come back.” She waited for him to agree. “Please? Like a normal family?”
“Fine,” he muttered. “Just one more night.”
“But before we leave,” she continued, “there's one other thing I think we should do, something that'd be cathartic for you.” She paused. “I want you to take me to visit your mother's grave. And your grandmother's. I want to see them.”
He opened his mouth to reply, before sighing. “Maybe. If we have time. Right now, my priority is cleaning out that basement.”
She watched as he headed to the hatch. Once he'd gone down below, she turned to go and find the children, before spotting her husband's phone resting on the counter-top. She told herself it would be wrong to go through his messages, so she resisted that particular temptation, but as she headed into the dining room she took out her own phone and brought up Reginald's number.
“Hey,” she said as soon as he answered, “it's me. I need you to do me a huge favor, and I need you to not mention it to John.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Twenty years ago
“I think it'll sell pretty well,” Graham said as he sipped from his double espresso at the airport bar. “It's a decent house, I'm sure some family's gonna want to take it on.”
“Are you sure you have to sell it?” John asked.
“What's wrong, getting sentimental?” Popping two paracetamol out of a packet, Graham dropped them into his mouth and washed them down with more coffee. “That house is no good for you, son. You spent far too long living there with your gran, I should've stepped in a long time ago and done something about it. Still, better late than never, and the old bird's in a better place now.” He smiled. “Unless she got taken below.”
“Taken below?”
“You know, down to the big red bloke with the horns and the flames.”
John nodded, feeling slightly relieved for some reason he didn't quite understand. All day, he'd been feeling as if he'd forgotten something important, and now the sensation seemed more powerful than ever. The events of the previous night with his father were hazy, even hazier than they'd been just a few hours earlier, and he couldn't shake the worry that something was missing from his mind.
“There it is again,” Graham said with a faint smile.
John turned to him.
“That vacant expression. I've seen it a couple of times during this visit, it's like your brain switches off for a few seconds and you sorta of... I dunno, you reboot. Are you sure you're feeling okay?”
John nodded.
“I could pay for you to see a shrink if you like.”
“No, I'm fine.”
“Don't underestimate the damage Liz did to you,” Graham continued, before looking around to make sure that no-one could overhear him. “Maybe I shouldn't say this, or maybe I should've said it a long time ago, but your mother told me some pretty dark things about old Elizabeth. She said your grandmother used to scream and yell at her, and call her names, but that wasn't the whole of it. There were marks on your mother's body, old marks, lots of little scars. She had plenty of explanations for them, but none of it ever rang true.” He paused, watching John's face for some hint of recognition. “I never said any of this to your mother, of course, but I realized a long time ago that your gran abused her emotionally and psychologically. Physically, too. Your mother once told me she felt like she was being torn in two directions, like the only way to survive was to become two people. How she managed to hold herself together and come out relatively normal is a mystery, but...” He paused again. “Your grandmother was evil. There, I said it.” He took another swig of coffee.
“That's a little strong,” John replied.
“It's true, though.” He took another sip. “I don't have to mince my words on the subject, not anymore. The irony is, she blamed everyone else for your mother's suicide, but if you ask me...” He paused. “Well, maybe that conversation is for another day. Elizabeth was an evil old crone and that house became an extension of her. Even over the past couple of days, I swear I could feel her presence sometimes.”
“Like a ghost?” John asked, shocked by the suggestion.
“Nah, ghosts aren't real,” Graham replied. “I heard a few creaks now and then, but that's just how houses are, especially old ones. It was more like... I guess when someone spends a lot of time in one place, and when they have a strong personality, a bit of them gets left behind even after they're dead. That's another reason why you shouldn't spend too much longer in the house. It's unhealthy. Plus, like it or not, I own the damn place and I've made my mind up. I'm selling it.” He checked his watch, before finishing his coffee and getting to his feet. “And now, if you'll excuse me, I need to think about going through to the lounge.”
“I guess people will want to come and look around,” John muttered.
“So keep it tidy,” Graham reminded him as they headed toward the security queue. “Don't clutter the place up and...” Stopping at the rear of the queue, he turned to John. “The basement,” he said with a frown.
“What about it?” John asked.
“Did we...” He paused. “Did we go down there last night after we got back from the pub?”
“No. Definitely not.”
“Are you sure? I've got this vague memory of going down and finding there was an extra wall.”
“There's no extra wall,” John replied. “We got back, you drank the rest of the s
herry, and then you fell down the stairs. That's about it. If you'd opened the hatch to the basement, I'd have known about it.”
“Huh. Must've been a dream then.” He rolled his eyes. “It's crazy what pops into your head when you're drunk, isn't it?”
“I wouldn't know,” John muttered. “You don't have to worry about the basement, though. There's nothing down there.” Even as he said those words, however, he felt as if maybe they weren't quite true.
***
“Hello?”
Standing at the top of the steps that led down into the basement, John listened for a moment. He'd been about to go to bed, several hours after getting back from waving his father off, when he'd heard a faint scratching sound from beneath the kitchen. He was reluctant to go down and look, since the basement light hadn't worked for several years, but at the same time he felt drawn to investigate. Something about the basement was bothering him, as if there was something down there that he'd forgotten.
He waited.
Silence.
“Hello?” he called out again.
No reply.
After making his way cautiously down the steps, he headed to the breeze-block wall. His father was right, it definitely hadn't been there before, but at the same time he knew there was no way a wall could just appear out of nowhere. He ran his hands across the surface, and finally he felt some deep, hidden memory starting to float to the surface, as if it had broken free from all the other forgotten memories at the bottom of his mind. He waited, convinced that he was about to understand what he'd forgotten.
For a fraction of a second, he remembered setting one breeze-block on top of two others, and using some kind of paste to seal them together.
As quickly as that memory arrived, however, it was gone again. He knew it had to be false, that there was no way he'd built a wall; after all, he was notoriously unpractical and the idea of him managing to finish such a huge job was impossible to accept. Still, as he made his way along the wall, he couldn't shake the feeling that some other memory was lingering at the edge of his thoughts, maybe even preparing to come to the surface. It was as if his mind was a vast ocean, and while dark scraps of knowledge had drifted to the darkness at the bottom, now one or two were starting to float back up.
“It's almost seven,” he suddenly remembered telling Alison a week or two earlier, “so there's not much point sleeping anymore. You said you have to go back to Peterborough today, so...” He remembered pausing, waiting for her to get the message. “I'm fine,” he'd told her. “Everyone has nightmares, and that's all it was. You don't need to worry about me. Nothing bad is going to happen.”
“I heard noises in the basement,” he remembered her saying. “It was almost like...” She'd smiled, teasing him. “Let's take a look.”
“No,” he'd said firmly. “There's nothing down there.”
And then, at some point, a scream. There had been a scream a little while later, maybe down in the basement itself. He looked around, but there was no sign of anything. He figured he had to be remembering dreams, that was all, but they seemed extremely vivid and as he stepped back and admired the breeze-block wall he couldn't stop thinking about the possibility that something important had happened, something he'd forgotten. He remembered his father investigating the wall during the previous night, pulling one of the blocks out and then -
And then...
He remembered dragging his father's unconscious body up the steps, but the rest of the night was something of a blur. It was as if dreams, memories and fantasies were colliding in his mind, and after a moment he realized he was developing a headache. Figuring that there was nothing to be gained by examining the wall any further, he turned and headed up the steps, before stopping to make doubly certain that the hatch was locked. After that, he grabbed his phone and brought up Alison's number, before trying to call her.
The call wouldn't even connect.
Setting his phone down, he made his way upstairs and headed to his grandmother's old room, which was bare now with even the carpet gone. He looked down at the spot where he'd found her body, and he tried to think back to what had happened next, but lately all his memories seemed to be patchy, with unexplained gaps. He'd dragged her onto the bed and then he'd called for an ambulance, or at least...
Pausing, he felt a lost memory detaching itself from his mind and starting to float upward, before a change in the current of his thoughts sent it drifting back down again.
Maybe, he figured, it would be good to get out of the house after all.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Today
“I'm so glad you could meet me at such short notice,” Sarah said with a smile as the waitress set some coffee cups between them. “It probably seems completely crazy that I'd contact you out of the blue like this.”
“It's not crazy,” Deborah Watkins replied, her eyes red from lack of sleep. As she reached down and picked up her cup, her hands were shaking. “I'm not even that surprised. I just... I guess I hoped that it ended when we moved out of that place.”
“Like I told you on the phone,” Sarah continued, “my husband and I aren't remotely upset or annoyed about anything. We're certainly not going to try to contest the sale, that's the farthest thing from our minds, it's just that we're interested in learning about your experiences while you were living in the house on Everley Street.” She paused, waiting for an answer, but the other woman seemed lost in thought. “I understand that you and your husband lived there for only a couple of years before you sold up again?”
Deborah nodded.
“And after that, you only moved across town?”
“With Daisy,” Deborah replied, turning and reaching over to the pram next to the table. She brushed her fingers against the child's hand, although Daisy didn't acknowledge the contact at all. Instead, the little girl seemed focused on Sarah, staring at her with unsettling blankness. For a child who was less than a year old, Daisy seemed preternaturally calm, apparently happy to just sit in her pram and not react to the world around her. A few minutes earlier, the waitress had dropped a tray of glasses; everyone in the cafe had been startled, but Daisy hadn't even blinked.
“She's beautiful,” Sarah said with a smile.
Deborah shook her head.
“She is,” Sarah continued. “She has such lovely blonde hair already.”
“She's not right,” Deborah whispered, with tears in her eyes, as she ran her fingers against the child's hands, as if she was still hoping that her daughter would look at her. “She hasn't been right since we left that house.”
“The house on Everley Street?”
“I don't know if...” Turning to Sarah, Deborah paused for a moment. “I thought it'd be okay once we left. She was screaming so much, but I thought that once we got her out of there, it'd all somehow settle down. I know you probably think it was wrong of us to sell the place without mentioning any of the crazy things that had happened, but we were desperate. I mean, when your daughter's in some kind of pain, you'll do anything to get her out of there.”
“I get it,” Sarah replied, “I just... Can you tell me exactly what happened to you while you were living there? You said Daisy was screaming a lot.”
“It was fine at first,” Deborah explained, her voice trembling with fear. “We moved in, it was our first house and we were newly married, looking to start a family. Then when I became pregnant, we started to notice odd things happening. Little bumps, you know? Vibrations. Sometimes the glass in the kitchen window would start trembling slightly for no reason, and there'd be these faint whispers, and I started to feel ill at ease all the time, like I was never alone. We didn't believe in ghosts, neither of us did, but by the time Daisy was born we'd both started to wonder if maybe there was something...”
Her voice trailed off again.
“Something in the house with you?” Sarah asked.
“Please don't think we're crazy,” Deborah whimpered, clearly struggling to keep from breaking down. “If it hadn't b
een for Daisy, we'd have stuck it out and laughed it all off, but after she was born... Everything was okay at the hospital, she seemed like the perfect baby, but once we got her home, she just didn't seem normal. Mike thought I was just suffering from depression after the birth, I mean he said he didn't think that, but I knew that's what was going through his mind. But after a few weeks, he started to notice it too. Daisy was strangely blank most of the time, and then other times she'd scream and scream.”
Looking over at the child again, Sarah couldn't help but notice that she seemed to be staring.
“We took her to the doctor so many times,” Deborah continued. “We're good parents, I swear, but they couldn't find anything wrong. Night after night, though, she was crying more and more, screaming... We tried having her in with us, but still she'd just scream in the middle of the night, and eventually it started happening during the day as well. Like she was in pain, but still we took her to the doctor almost every day and they couldn't find anything. I could see the look in their eyes, they thought we were paranoid, but I started thinking maybe it was...”
Sarah waited for her to finish. “Maybe it was what?”
“Maybe the pain wasn't physical,” Deborah replied, leaning over and kissing her blank-faced, unresponsive daughter on the forehead. “Maybe it was emotional. Maybe she was sensing or seeing or hearing something that Mike and I weren't aware of.”
“That sounds a little hard to believe,” Sarah pointed out. “She's just a child.”
“I know,” Deborah continued, turning to her, “and Mike thought the same thing. He started accusing me of wanting Daisy to be sick, like he thought that I had some kind of mental illness. He'd hate it if he found out that I'd come to meet you today, he'd think it was part of it all, but I thought you deserved to know the truth. Finally, the night we left, that was when it all became too much and Daisy's screams... She wouldn't stop. She was screaming so much, she was turning blue and suffocating, she wasn't even drawing breath. I honestly believe that if we'd stayed in that house another few minutes, she'd have screamed herself to death.”