Remains

  She’d neatly folded Alex’s sweater and placed it on top of his case. As the sun sank into the bay on that second evening, she’d unfolded the Ouija board on that precious red material. That night she’d talked to him again, calling into the dark, her hands resting lightly on the Ouija board’s planchette, desperate for a sign that he heard her. None had come. Hour after hour the empty silence had worn her down. She’d whispered until her voice was hoarse, until her calls became pleas, until she begged for him to answer her.

  Two more nights of silence had followed.

  Lucy refilled her glass. She’d gotten a taste for whiskey living with Matt. He wouldn’t drink anything else. He wouldn’t have drunk this. It tasted as bad as it smelled. She took a large mouthful. And then another.

  She rested her fingers softly on the planchette. She closed her eyes and sighed. She couldn’t take much more of this.

  “I’m sorry, Alex. I didn’t mean what I said downstairs. I don’t want you to shut up. I don’t want that at all. I’m…I’m just tired and it hurts.”

  The candle’s flame had slowed. Action Jack’s face slipped in and out of the shadows.

  “Please, Alex.”

  All around her, darkness pressed on the edges of the candle’s glow. Like the woman in the illustration, she was surrounded by the shifting night.

  “Can you hear me? Can you move the pointer?”

  Lucy opened her eyes. Was someone watching her? She looked past the candle’s glow, over towards the window where she’d seen the grey figure.

  “Alex, are you here?”

  The planchette remained motionless.

  “Is it the light? It’s too light, isn’t it?”

  She snatched forward and snuffed the candle. Hot wax stung her fingertips. The night snapped closed around her.

  Lucy leaned forward, into the darkness, waiting for her eyes to adjust. The glow from the candle’s flame had left a red smudge on her retina, it followed her gaze as her eyes swept around the room. She felt the hairs lifting on the back of her neck. The cold seemed to have drawn closer the moment the candle had gone out.

  Lucy stretched a hand through the frigid air. She found the edge of the case and walked her fingers across it until they rested gently on the planchette once more.

  “Alex, I saw you in the window, didn’t I? I know you were here.”

  The case developed from the gloom ahead, “Please, are you here now?”

  The room grew around her as her eyes adjusted. The Ouija board, the case, her hands reaching into the black. She longed for the grey skin to draw out of the shadows towards her.

  “I love you son, please say something, talk to me.”

  The planchette remained motionless.

  “Why won’t you talk to me? Alex? How many nights do you want me to wait? What have I done?”

  Lucy took another drink. And then another. The silence was desolate, utterly empty. Alex wasn’t here. Perhaps he hadn’t ever been. She started to cry. She could taste her tears, salty on her lips as she drained her glass. She fumbled for the bottle; it rocked back, almost toppling, as she found its neck in the dark. She filled the glass until she felt whiskey pouring over her fingers. This would be the fourth night of silence.

  “Alex, please! I need to know if you’re here. Please, make a noise, a sound…”

  Nothing.

  “I just want to talk to you one more time. You can’t be gone! Please. You can’t! I love you so much!”

  Lucy searched the darkness, desperate for even the smallest sign that she’d been heard. But, as her eyes grew more accustomed to the dark, the only thing to appear was the wall ahead and the rough plaster plug callously marking where a shotgun blast had torn through her boy. Lucy screamed, her grief igniting into rage. She hurled her glass against the wall. It exploded against the mould riddled plaster.

  “FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! YOU HEAR ME?” Lucy climbed to her feet. Whiskey ran down the wall, black streaks where Alex’s blood had poured nine months before. “You took my son! Why? Why?” Lucy screamed at the ceiling. “What did I ever do? What did he do to deserve this? You fucking monster! What did you do? What did you do?”

  Lucy stood, defiantly demanding an answer. Tears of fury spilled over her cheeks but she would not back down.

  She hadn’t noticed but the planchette on the Ouija board had moved. It had come to rest highlighting a single word: NO.

  9

  Lucy stirred. She was lying on the floor. She didn’t know how she got there.

  Winter sunlight streamed in through the open curtains. Her head throbbed. She closed her eyes again but that didn’t help. The world glowed red and angry against her eyelids. Slowly, she rolled onto her side. The smell of whiskey sent a wave of nausea welling up from her stomach into her throat. Last night’s bottle lay empty beside her. She pushed it away, trying to breathe through the sickness. It rattled lazily across the stripped boards, coming to a stop against the wall with a hollow clunk.

  Lucy brought her arm up to her face so she could read her watch. It was just past 4:00pm. She’d slept through the whole day. In a little over an hour it would be dark again. The Ouija board lay face down, knocked onto the floor. She didn’t remember doing that either.

  Gently, she hauled herself up into a sitting position. She planted her hands on the floor, as if that might somehow anchor the room that was swaying around her.

  The bedroom door was closed. She didn’t remember shutting herself in. What she did remember of last night came in flashes, scattered black pieces. She shivered. Was it the cold that had woken her? She hazily remembered the temperature dropping, freezing air wrapping itself around her, drawing the warmth from her body—and then the light was there, burning her eyes.

  Something was wrong. Lucy turned to look behind her.

  10

  A small cry escaped her lips. She clapped a hand over her mouth and scuttled back away from the wall.

  Scrawled across the wall in large, malformed letters was a message:

  DON’T LET THEM CATCH YOU LOOKING

  Lucy’s eyes darted around the room.

  What’s going on?

  “Alex?” Her quiet words were startling against the stillness of the house.

  “Alex, did you do this?”

  Don’t let them catch you looking.

  Don’t let who catch you looking?

  The house remained silent. But it was no longer the empty silence that had filled the house every day since Lucy had moved in. Something had changed. The soundless room felt charged, filled with electricity. It felt like it was waiting.

  Listening.

  Lucy could hear her blood rushing in her ears. “Alex?”

  She edged across the room towards the message. When she saw the chips of plaster beneath the letters she stopped.

  The words hadn’t been written on the wall, they’d been carved into it.

  It’s a warning.

  But…from Alex?

  Had she finally contacted him?

  That thought alone was enough to pull her forward once more. Onwards until she found herself sitting in front of the words. She reached out a trembling hand and touched the letters. Plaster dust painted her fingertips, broken pieces caught and bit at her skin. She ran her fingers over the letters, feeling in the cracks and grooves as if she were searching for an answer, a connection, something only a mother could find. Had her boy been here? Was this the sign she’d longed for? Outside, the afternoon sun was quickly changing from white to orange, day into winter dusk.

  Lucy hauled herself to her feet. She backed away, across the room to the bedroom door. She couldn’t take her eyes off the message. If she’d contacted Alex, why would he have written this?

  Reaching behind her, Lucy felt along the door until she found the handle. She turned it. She felt the door shift as t
he latch pulled back.

  Something slammed into the door from the other side.

  Lucy screamed and wheeled around.

  The door knocked gently in its frame. What was happening? Was someone on the other side? Impulsively, Lucy stuck out a foot, planting it behind the door to stop it from opening any further. Would that really stop anyone if they barged against the other side? It had stopped the knocking. The house fell silent once more.

  She leaned in towards the door, listening for any movement in the corridor beyond. It was hard to hear anything over her own fast, scared breathing. She took the handle in her hand.

  She slipped her foot back.

  And tore the door open.

  For a long moment she stood behind it, ready to use it as a shield should anything tear out of the dim corridor towards her.

  Eventually she got up the nerve to lean out of the room. The dim light from the window behind her didn’t stretch far along the corridor. Lucy followed the wall with her eyes. The hallway seemed empty, but the hulking frame of the open wardrobe blocked her view before she could see to the stairs.

  Soon, even the light at her back would be gone and the night would crawl from its daytime hiding place once more. Lucy turned back to the message cut into the wall, and then to her Ouija board.

  11

  Huddled at the end of the corridor, peeking around the wardrobe, the darkness watched Lucy turn to look behind her. It watched her head back into the room and, after a time, it followed her.

  Night was closing in fast now. Lucy gathered up the Ouija board and its planchette. She didn’t bother to light a candle. She was only interested in one thing: contacting Alex.

  She set up the Ouija on the floor close to the wall. In the fading light she reached a hand up to the message. She ran her fingers over the broken letters. DON’T LET THEM CATCH YOU LOOKING. Lucy rested her other hand on the Ouija board’s planchette.

  “Alex, I know you’re here.” She looked around the room. It seemed to be shrinking around her, the last grey evening light corralled into the middle of the room.

  “Please, son, talk to me.”

  She willed the planchette to move beneath her fingertips.

  It remained still.

  “It’s okay, Mommy’s here.”

  The thick darkness of the hallway had reached the open doorway behind Lucy.

  “Can you move the pointer? Can you show me that you’re here?”

  Beyond the doorway the corridor was pitch, disorienting black that stretch­ed past the open door to Ted and Ann Lowe’s bedroom and on to the ajar wardrobe at the top of the stairs. Whatever had carved the words into the wall of Todd’s room while Lucy lay unconscious, this was its domain: the darkness of a nightmare, drenched in sweat and panic, a fever dream where black limbs spilled, twisted and wet, onto the stripped wooden floor. An unspeakable darkness, where grasping fingers, caked in putrescence, shot out and snapped tight around white flesh.

  A shrill scream in the entrance hall: the phone began to ring. It cried out in the dark until Lucy’s answering machine kicked in. Alex laughed and the familiar message began to play: “Hi! You’re through to the Campbell Clan. I’m afraid…” The message cut out.

  The hallway fell silent once more.

  Then, something shifted close by the machine. Seconds later it was on the stairs, dragging itself up through the darkness: the ghost of Lucy Campbell pulling herself up to the second floor. Recorded over her message last night when she’d drunkenly tried to turn off the answering machine, the sound of her footsteps faded, moving out of range of the cheap microphone, and once more the hallway fell quiet.

  Next, static, a scratch of interference on the recording, was followed by something else: movement. It wasn’t Lucy this time, she’d returned to her vigil in Todd Lowe’s room. The movement came again, closer, something dragging itself across the hallway floor. Sliding, squelching, it pulled its raw form towards the machine. But then, far worse than any shape the recording evoked, came a voice. Two words, barked, rough and distorted:

  “NO GOD”.

  The recording cut out.

  The machine beeped.

  Another voice began to speak.

  “Hello? Lucy? Is someone there? Lucy, it’s Doctor Bachman. Matt called me. He told me… I…er…I didn’t believe it at first. Lucy, please listen to me. You shouldn’t stay a moment longer in that place.”

  The black house fed on Doctor Bachman’s words, drinking in his concern.

  “It’s very bad for you, Lucy. Look, here’s my home number. Please call me. If I don’t hear from you tonight I’m going to come to the house tomorrow to talk with you. Please Lucy, leave tonight. Call me and let me know you’ve gone.”

  Doctor Bachman repeated his number twice. He waited on the line until the machine cut him off. Any last rays of evening light that had ventured into the house had now been smothered. Throughout 1428 Montgomery the darkness was complete.

  12

  White skin drew out of the black. It stretched tight, pale and paper thin, over the frame of bones. Lucy lay on her side; she’d passed out on the floor of Todd Lowe’s bedroom. The darkness watched her sleeping. It was just after 3:00am.

  Lucy lay awkwardly on the stripped boards. She slept where the booze had left her. At some point she’d lost her shoes. Her bare feet huddled together for warmth. When the CTS Decon team had cleared the room they’d taken the carpet, too. The floorboards smelled of bleach; someone had been tasked with cleaning them, sponging Alex’s blood into buckets.

  Lucy had pulled her jacket half off while she slept. She’d been too hot and then too cold. Her blouse hung loosely; like her skin, it had fitted her once. Her neck had grown so thin that her veins bulged, ruddy worms snaking, just below the surface. It took in every detail of Lucy. Grief had stripped the life from her. She’d wasted away until she was a bag of bones, a dead thing unable to find peace.

  Its gaze followed Lucy’s skin, over her throat, across her jaw… It linger­ed on her face. Even in sleep the sadness that filled her every day shaped her expression.

  Lucy stirred. The thing in the darkness retreated. It waited, until it was sure she hadn’t woken, then it crept closer once more. Its attention turned to Lucy’s hand, outstretched on the floorboards.

  Lucy moaned. In the shapeless void of sleep, she could smell the bleach. It had crawled into her dream, turning the darkness red with blood. She was back in the tunnel, moving inevitably forward, desperately trying to stop herself, screaming to wake up…

  And then she was awake. But it wasn’t the thrashing in her dream that had woken her, it was a movement in the room with her! Her eyes snapped open.

  “Alex?”

  Lucy pulled herself up quick, the haze of sleep and booze immediately gone. Her eyes darted around the room, scanning the shadows for Alex’s shape, for any movement that might signal she wasn’t alone.

  Something felt wrong. She pulled her jacket closed. That was when she noticed her hand.

  Painted across the fingers that had been outstretched on the floor was fresh plaster dust. Lucy caught her breath and got to her feet.

  “Alex!” Could he really have been in the room just now? She stumbled from the bedroom and out into the hallway. What she saw stopped her in her tracks.

  13

  SKINNED FACES WATCHING

  Lucy stood, frozen, in the doorway to Todd Lowe’s room, her eyes fixed on the words carved into the wall ahead of her.

  “Alex… Are you here?” she whispered.

  Something sharp had been scored across the wall to spell out the message. Plaster, gouged from the wall, had been cast across the floor beneath the words. The same plaster she’d woken to find on her fingers?

  This is wrong.

  This is all wrong.

  If the message was from Alex, why w
ould he have written this?

  Alex didn’t write this.

  No! She wouldn’t believe that. She couldn’t believe that. She’d contacted Alex! This was the sign, the proof she’d wanted. She’d called to him and he’d answered her. She just had to understand what it meant.

  SKINNED FACES WATCHING

  She balled her fists. If the message was from Alex, why was she shaking so badly? And why did she want to run?

  She couldn’t look at the words any longer. She turned away, squinting to see down the corridor, towards the wardrobe and the stairs. She could just make out more plaster scattered across the floor further down the hallway. A trail of plaster dust, stretching away from Todd’s room like breadcrumbs leading her deeper into a nightmare.

  “Alex?” Lucy whispered into the black.

  Silence.

  She managed to get up the nerve to step out from the doorway and into the hall. Her fists were white-knuckle tight. That hadn’t stopped the shaking from spreading through her body. She gritted her teeth to try and stop them chattering.

  As she got closer, she could see the letters in more detail. The S had been made from three strikes, driven downwards, tearing the plaster out of the wall. They made Lucy think of knife wounds. She’d touched the first message, had wanted to somehow connect with Alex through the letters. This time she kept her distance. The F in Faces had been scored so deep Lucy could see the brickwork beneath.