by Amy Cross
Chapter Twelve
Kate
"Where's it coming from?" I shout as I run downstairs.
It's been almost two hours since Ellen went missing, and now suddenly I can hear her screaming from somewhere in the house. Mum went out about ten minutes ago, but she'll be back from the shops soon and if Ellen's still screaming, everything's going to go to hell. There'll be a grand inquisition, all three of us will get the blame, and the bad mood will last for so long, we'll all be little old people by the time we're forgiven.
"What's wrong with her now?" John asks, running down after me.
"Stop," I say, grabbing him by the shoulders and forcing him to stand still. "Listen. Where's it coming from? Where is she?"
"It's..." He pauses, and I can see the fear in his eyes as Ellen continues to scream in the distance. "It's not upstairs," he says after a moment. "It's more like it's coming from down here or..."
At the same time, we both look down at the kitchen floor.
"The cellar," I say suddenly, turning and running to the back door. I almost trip on the step as I race out into the garden, but fortunately I'm able to keep my balance. With John right behind me, I run toward the cellar door, but at the last moment I see that it's already open, and suddenly Ellen stops screaming.
"Over there!" John shouts.
Turning, I see Ellen stumbling across the lawn, heading away from the house.
"Ellen!" I shout, racing over to her.
As soon as I reach her and turn her to face me, I can see that something's very wrong. She has the sad face that John always hates, as if some kind of deep, impenetrable sadness has suddenly welled up and taken root in her body. Her face is low, as if she can't even stand to look at me, but there's something else wrong too; she takes a step forward, almost as if she's trying to walk through me, and the way she's moving seems wrong, as if her whole body has stiffened.
"Ellen," I say, taking hold of her chin and gently tilting her face up so that she's looking at me. "It's okay. Where were you?"
Her eyes stare into mine, and her bottom lip starts to move slightly, as if she's about to say something.
"I was looking for you," I continue, as John stands nearby. "I went everywhere. I even went into the cellar, and I went to the gate and the bottom of the garden. I was really worried, Ellen. Where did you go?"
"I..."
She pauses.
"Why were you screaming?" I ask. "Ellen, answer me. You have to tell me what's wrong!" I wait, but something seems to be stopping her, almost as if someone has put a plug in her throat. "If you don't tell me," I continue, "then you'll have to tell Mum when she gets back from the shops. Is that what you want? She's already shouted at you once today. How would you feel if it all had to happen again?"
"I told you," John mutters. "She's mad."
"Shut up!" I shout, turning to him. "Shut the fuck up and piss off!"
Clearly shocked by my outburst, he turns and runs back into the house. He'll probably start crying, and then Mum'll find out that I've been mean to him, but right now I just need to focus on Ellen.
"Please," I continue, taking her hand and leading her across the lawn. "It's okay," I add. "You know I'm not mad at you, right? We just need to make sure that you're okay, and that Mum doesn't find out that anything happened. We can both agree that that's a pretty good plan, right?"
As we get close to the bottom of the garden, she stops suddenly, as if she doesn't want to go any further.
"Talk to me," I continue, turning to her. "Ellen, you have to say something. Are you hurt?"
She stares at me.
Realizing that she's in some kind of daze, I pull her sleeves up and check her arms for marks. For a couple of minutes, she stands completely still and silent while I check her for any kind of injury, but finally it becomes clear that - physically, at least - she's fine. As I look into her eyes, it becomes clearer than ever that the problem is in her head. I've always been worried that one day Ellen would snap, and now I'm starting to think that maybe the time has arrived.
"Just tell me what happened," I say eventually. "I know it's hard, but you'll feel better once you've shared it with someone. You know it always helps to share, right? You don't have to talk about how you feel, but just tell me the basics. Where did you go?"
She stares at me.
I decide to wait. She has to say something eventually, and if I leave a little silence, she might feel compelled to speak instead of waiting for me to say something. I guess I always over-compensate at times like this, in order to see if I can force Ellen to communicate, but I probably just end up crowding her out.
Her bottom lip trembles.
I want to ask if she's okay, but I force myself to keep quiet. The silence persists between us, like a kind of aching chasm that one of us has to fill. It won't be me.
"Why didn't you help me?" she whispers eventually, her voice barely louder than the rustling grass nearby. "Why did you just leave me like that?"
"I couldn't find you," I reply, trying not to burst into tears.
"You were standing right there," she says with a frown.
"Where?"
"In the cellar." She pauses. "You came and stood next to me, and I thought you were going to help me, but then you just carried on walking. It was like you didn't even care."
"I didn't..." I start to say. "I mean, I was down there looking for you, but I didn't see you. I looked everywhere."
"You were talking to me," she continues, her voice sounding blank and emotionless. "You were talking, and you stood next to me for a couple of minutes, and then you carried on as if I wasn't even there. I watched you walk away, and I was screaming inside my head for you to come back, but you ignored me."
"I didn't see you," I continue, trying to work out how the hell I could have missed her. I swear, I checked every part of the cellar, and there was no sign of her. "Ellen, I was looking for you, but you weren't there. Maybe you were in the shadows or something, but I promise, I was down there trying to find you." I pause. "Why didn't you say anything? Even if I didn't see you, couldn't you have called out to me?"
She shakes her head.
"Why not?"
She reaches up and puts a hand over her mouth.
"You didn't want to?" I ask.
She shakes her head.
"You couldn't?"
She nods.
"Because..."
She slowly takes her hand away from her mouth. "You don't understand," she says finally. "You can't. I'm the only person who can understand, because I'm the only person who's felt it and seen it."
I take a deep breath. It's as if Ellen's in her own little world, with rules and logic that make perfect sense to her but which come across as being completely crazy to anyone else. I want to break through the barrier that's surrounding her, but she seems to have no particular desire to help me. Just when I thought I was starting to understand my sister, and to know how to handle her eccentricities and weird kinks, she seems to have shifted gear and moved out of reach, and I'm not sure I can ever catch up to her again.
"It's okay," she says after a moment. "It's not your fault. It's mine."
Unable to think of anything to say, I put my arms around her and give her a hug. At first I wait for her to hug me back, and then I realize that she's just standing there, letting me do this to her without responding. I have to believe that she'll pull out of it eventually, and that one day I'll understand, but for now I feel as if I don't have the energy to keep pushing.
"Let's go inside," I say, taking her hand again and leading her to the house.
While she fixes herself up in the bathroom and brushes her hair straight, with the door open, I go to the lounge and look out at the garden. Mum will be home soon, but I don't think she'll notice that anything's wrong. After a moment, I spot something moving in the long grass at the bottom of the garden, and for a fraction of a second I see a kind of gray shape, almost like a withered back with a protruding spine, moving through the undergrowt
h. Before I can really react, it slips out of sight, and I tell myself that I must have imagined the whole thing.
Sometimes, all I want is to get as far away from this house as possible, even from my family. Even from Ellen. I don't think I can carry her through life forever.
Chapter Thirteen
Ellen
Everyone's asleep. Even Mum.
The room is pitch black. Looking over at Kate's bed, I can't see anything but I can hear the sound of her breathing slowly. I wait for a while, determined to make sure that there's absolutely no chance that I could wake her up. It sounds like she's in a deep sleep, though, so I slowly crawl out from under my duvet and get out of bed. The floorboards creak a little, but not enough to wake her, and I make my way slowly over to the door. As I pull the door open a little, a crack of moonlight enters the room and I see for certain that Kate is fast asleep. In a way, I wish I could wake her up and get her to come with me, but she wouldn't understand.
Anyway, this is something I have to do alone.
Someone's waiting for me. I can feel it in my heart.
As soon as I'm out on the landing, I stop for a moment and listen to the sound of the house. The only person who ever tends to be up and about in the middle of the night is Mum, because she sometimes has trouble sleeping, but tonight I can tell that she's asleep just by listening to the silence. She'd be angry if she knew I was up and about, of course, and after everything that happened earlier today I can't afford to annoy her again so soon. I don't quite know what she'd do, since I've never had two run-ins with her in quick succession, but I'm sure she'd manage to think of something. I'd be in the dog-house for weeks, and all the while she'd be acting as if somehow she was the victim.
I hate her.
Taking a step forward, I look over at the window. Moonlight is streaming through, picking out shapes and shadows in the gloom. When I reach the top of the stairs, I look straight down at the hallway below, and I immediately see a hand holding onto the bannister, reaching around from one of the rooms. I take a deep breath and feel a kind of stiffness in my chest as I realize that somehow I knew this hand was going to be there. It looks pale in the moonlight, but thin and quite elegant, and for some reason I'm not scared at all.
I have to do this.
I have to be brave.
After all, she's appeared to me. Not to Kate or John, not to Mum or Dad. Me. Only to me. She called me from my dreams and let me know that she'd be here. It was almost as if she was daring me to come and face her.
I take a deep breath.
I'm not scared.
After pausing for a moment to listen to the silence again and make sure that there's no-one about, I start making my way slowly down the stairs. The hand stays where it is, resting on the bannister at the bottom, and it doesn't flinch or move in any way as I get closer. I know the hand doesn't belong to anyone in the family, and I'm also certain that it's not an intruder. It's the hand of the person whose presence I've been able to sense for so long in the house, and it seems that she - I'm sure it's a woman - finally wants to show herself to me. Although I'm apprehensive and a little nervous, however, I'm definitely not scared. This is just something that has to happen, and the idea of running or calling out for help barely even crosses my mind.
When I get to the bottom of the stairs, I can see that there's a figure standing in the next room, with its back to me as it reaches behind to touch the bannister. It's definitely a woman, and she was quite clearly trying to get my attention. I stare up at the back of her head and see that she has an old-fashioned kind of hairstyle, and she's wearing a long black dress that makes me think of old pictures. Now that I'm closer, I can see that although the moonlight is making her hand look pale blue, her skin seems to be more of a gray color, and she's very thin.
I wish I was as thin as her.
Reaching out to touch her hand, I stop just in time. From just a few inches away, I can already feel an overwhelming sense of coldness, as if her body is radiating ice. A shiver passes through my chest as I realize that there's no sound of her breathing, no sound of anything at all. There's just something about her that seems absolutely still and calm and dead.
Opening my mouth, I try to think of something to say. If I'm the only person in the house that this ghost has appeared to, then there must be a reason; something about me must have made her think that I'd be most receptive to her, or maybe she wants something and she thinks I'm the only one who can help. Still, she seems to be making no effort to communicate with me, and she hasn't even turned to look in my direction. I glance up the stairs one more time, just to make absolutely certain that no-one else is awake, and then I start walking slowly through the doorway, all the while keeping my eyes fixed on the woman's face.
When I reach the other side and stare up at her, I take a deep breath.
After a moment, the woman turns her head a little and looks straight down at me.
She has my face. A little older, bit it's definitely my face, without any doubt. And as she stares at me, all I can do is stare back at her sad eyes and try to work out what she wants.
Part Three
The Bells
Chapter One
Luke
"How can you stand to be there?" Kate asks, sitting stiffly on a metal chair opposite the bed. "Doesn't it drive you crazy?"
"It's fine," I reply, watching her from my position on the end of the bed.
She shakes her head, and it's clear that there are tears in her eyes.
"It's different for me," I add. "I didn't grow up there. I mean, I've heard the stories, but I didn't actually experience anything, so to me it's not so bad to be there."
We sit in silence for a moment.
Neither of us is really ready for this conversation.
It's been three weeks since Kate moved out of the house. We'd been living there for five years, having originally settled there with her father while he was suffering from cancer. He was sick for a number of years before finally pulling through against all the odds, and something in Kate just seemed to snap. It was as if the strain of living at the house had been too much, and she panicked. What followed was a very quick descent into serious mental illness: depression; pills; self-harming; more pills; alcohol; screaming fits; brief hospitalization; a short, unsuccessful holiday; more pills; another stay in hospital; and finally she took what little money she'd saved up and rented this apartment.
Small.
Just big enough for one.
No pets allowed.
In other words, it's the kind of apartment that someone rents when they're single, not when they're in a committed relationship.
We haven't broken up yet. I'm still living in the house with her father and the dog, hoping that somehow she'll change her mind and decide to give our relationship another chance. Her feelings seem to have solidified, however, and what initially seemed like a reaction against the house has become a reaction against everything else in her life. Me, the dog, her father... She suddenly wants none of us. I know we should talk about it directly, but I also know that I'll cry when we have to have the big conversation.
So we keep putting it off.
Besides, she needs me.
"When I was younger," she says after a moment, unable to look straight at me for more than a few seconds at a time, "I used to hear bells in my bedroom."
"I know," I reply, feeling a little weary at the prospect of hearing the bell story yet again.
"I don't think you do," she continues. "Not really. Unless you've been there, unless you've been through it, you can't know. You can try to understand, but it's never going to be the same." Her left leg is trembling now, a clear sign of nerves. "When Ellen went to sleep, I'd stay awake and listen. It didn't happen every night -"
"I know," I say again. "You've told me this over and over -"
"You don't want to listen, do you?" she asks.
Sighing, I sit back. When I came to look at the apartment, I'd hoped we might get closer again; I sat on the
bed, hoping she'd come and sit next to me, but instead she took up position on that little chair by the desk. I know she wants us to break up, and we've been circling that conversation for a few weeks now, but I guess neither of us has quite managed to say the words. She's only a couple of meters away, but it feels like she's too far to reach.
"Some nights," she continues after a moment, "I'd hear a small bell in the distance. Just a small one, hand-held... It'd ring on the stairs. I'd stay under the bedsheets, terrified as I listened to the silence of the house, and then the bell would sound again, a little closer to the bedroom door. I knew it was coming..." She pauses; she always pauses at this point in the story, the telling of which has become a ritual over the years. "Ellen never woke up while this was happening. I don't think anyone woke up. It was just me, in the dark, listening to the bell coming closer through the house. I knew Mum would be angry if I made any noise, so I forced myself to stay as quiet as possible, even though..."
Silence.
"I'd be sobbing," she adds, staring straight ahead, "but I used to put my hands over my mouth, to make sure no-one could hear. The bell would usually stop once it got to the bedroom door, but some nights the door was slightly open and the bell came all the way in. I'd clamp my hands so tight over my face to stop anyone from hearing my sobs. It'd always stop once it got into the room, but it'd take me a while to calm down. I couldn't blow my nose, either, in case I woke Mum. I'd just have to sniff all the tears and mucus back up."
"It must have been hard," I reply after a respectful pause. I know exactly how she wants me to react to this story, even though I'm so goddamn tired of hearing it. Since her depression became bad, she's talked about nothing but the house, constantly going over all the stories about her childhood, as if somehow the past has got its teeth into her belly and won't let go. Sometimes, I almost think that she enjoys being trapped like this, but I know that's probably unfair. "I understand," I say eventually. "Honestly..."