by Lucy Cameron
Her mobile starts to ring. Bloody typical, just as she’s dropped it back into the depths of her bag. She juggles it back out, alongside the basket of shopping, the extra items on offer that will be perfect for Sunday lunch and a plastic dinosaur she’s sure she asked to be left in the car. Harry tugs at her coat. Louise stands there, texting. Number withheld. Could be the police station, they always withhold their number. She sighs, yet again, not sure she can tell anymore lies… Perhaps it’s time to ask for help?
‘Hello, Anna speaking.’
‘Oh hello, is that Anna Morgan?’
‘Yes. Who is this?’
‘It’s Elsie, Elsie from down the street.’ Anna feels her face harden. Another shadow from Rhys’s past Anna can’t quite shake off. Elsie. The woman who behaves like a mum to Rhys, but a stranger to his wife. Anna’s tone is cold.
‘How can I help?’
‘It’s to let you know Rhys is here.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Rhys. Rhys Morgan, your husband,’ like she doesn’t know who her own husband is, ‘he’s here.’
‘Where?’
‘At my house.’
‘Why is he at your house? Is everything okay?’
‘Oh yes dear, it’s fine. There’s no need to worry, it’s just to put your mind at rest. He was in rather a state when he arrived, I wasn’t sure if you knew –’
‘Of course I knew.’ Who the hell does she think she is? ‘Can you ask him to head home, please?’
‘Well the thing is, dear, he’s fast asleep and I’d really rather not wake him, but when he does awake I shall be sure to send him on his way.’
‘Sorry, asleep? It’s the middle of the afternoon? Look, I’d really rather you just…’ Dial tone.
What the…? For a brief second, Anna is a blank canvas, unsure what her reaction should be. Offended by the dial tone? Who actually hangs up the phone halfway through a conversation? Relieved Rhys is okay? Smug and hopeful that he could be wreaking the same kind of disaster in that old cow’s home? Jealous he’s with Elsie when he should be with them? Angry that she was worried, is worried? Angry that she is stood in the middle of the supermarket while he is warm and fed and asleep? She would love to be asleep on some old dear’s couch, being looked after. Yep, angry is going to win. Rhys isn’t here to take it out on so she shamefully does the next best thing. Harry rams another dinosaur’s head through the holes in the side of the basket.
‘Harry, for god’s sake, will you please stop doing that. You can be so bloody naughty sometimes.’
Further up the freezers, he already watches. Has been watching for some time. Long brown hair. Big brown eyes.
‘You can be so bloody naughty sometimes’. A naughty, vile little boy. He feels his flesh start to goosebump. She taps something into her phone.
‘Rhys,’ she’s saying, ‘will you please come home.’ She is angry. Her brow furrows. ‘I do not appreciate that… woman calling me to tell me where my husband is, all smug and self-righteous… for god’s sake… please.’ She hangs up. The little boy pulls on her coat. Naughty little boy, naughty little vile boy. There is a girl, the girl doesn’t notice anything. She is a younger, smaller copy of her mother. She is perfect too.
Rhys, that’s his name. She wants Rhys to come home. She tells Rhys to come home. She’s angry with Rhys. Rhys is weak and will do what she says. They always do. Rhys will try and stop him like the others did. He giggles to himself. He likes it when they try to stop him.
Everything is coming together this time. It really could work. She must have been sent to him, to appear like that.
Anna.
He turns her name over in his head. He likes it. He likes it a lot.
Anna demanded his attention through that window. She pretended not to. Pretended not to see him as she crossed the road in front of the gym, entered the supermarket, came out again with pumpkins.
He knew she would be back. Would not be able to stay away from him. All he had to do was wait. Pam waits with him of course. A little put out at the interruption.
He sniffs the air. Her perfume is sweet. He turns slowly, she comes clearly into focus. Her mouth opens, sound high pitched. She hasn’t seen him. Hasn’t noticed he’s here. She’s too busy screeching at the boy, the vile little boy with the perfect fingernails. Naughty vile little boy – never does what he’s told. Watching, he runs his own broken fingernail across his lip.
Anna backs up along the row of freezers, heads straight towards his basket. His basket he has left on the floor in front of the freezers. Have you done that on purpose? And then she’s turning, moments too late, as she’s already falling. The bloody beef joint she carries hits the floor with a thud similar to her own. Meat on meat. One packaged, one fresh. Quickly he is above her. Reaches out his hand. Her skin is soft to his touch. It takes his breath away. He helps her to her feet.
‘I am so sorry. Here, let me help you.’ Like words he is observing, knows he should say. ‘Totally my fault for leaving my basket there. Are you okay?’ She smiles up at him. Apologises. It is her fault. She was not looking where she was going. It’s true but he doesn’t say so. The smile lights up her face. A smile she has been saving especially for him. Her basket is full of meat. Meat for the naughty little boy if he has been good enough to deserve it. He realises she has noticed he is starring at her basket and laughs again, a sound that is light, like a bird. He smiles too.
The bird is punched from the air.
‘Just stocking up on the deals while they are available.’ She nods at her basket. He has no idea what she’s talking about. Her skin looks as soft as it feels. Go on, touch her again you know you want to. He shakes his head. She seems to be waiting for him to speak. He’s clenching his teeth so turns it into a smile. A smile for her. Teeth knocking teeth. Metal on bone. A line drawn in biro on her long, pale throat.
‘Anyway, best be going.’ She turns, half nods to the children she’s with. Introducing them to him with the tiniest of movements. ‘You know how it is.’ No, he really doesn’t. But he would very much like to.
Slowly, he licks his lips.
One minute Anna is trying to wrestle a dinosaur head out of the slats of her basket and the next she is flat on the floor, the wind knocked from her. Serves you right, she thinks to herself. That’s karma for you. The man is above her instantly. Reaches down. His complexion white as milk. His skin clammy against hers. He looks down at her and speaks.
‘I am so sorry. Here let me help you.’ His mouth opens and a thousand insects seem to scurry out and run all over his body. She contains a shudder. ‘Totally my fault for leaving my basket there. Are you okay?’ She nods. Still winded. Her hand is damp from his touch. Something indescribable emanates from him, makes her skin crawl. His eyes roam over her. Pause on the shopping in her basket, then dart off to Harry. To Louise. He grimaces at her. Not physically near, but far too close. Anna smiles back. Her mouth on polite autopilot, ending this… meeting as quickly as possible.
‘Anyway, best be going.’ Her eyes dart, make sure the children are close. ‘You know how it is.’ Whatever else they need they can do without. There’s always something in the freezer. She needs to get out, be as far away from this man as possible. She sweats under her heavy winter coat. Louise is paying attention. Keeping up.
‘Mum, who’s that man?’ asks Harry as they round the corner to the checkouts.
‘I have no idea, honey.’
‘Why did you fall over his basket?’
‘Harry, don’t ask stupid questions.’
‘I didn’t like him. I don’t think we should be his friend.’ Anna couldn’t agree more. Neither can she shake off the feeling of the man’s eyes following her all the way home.
42.
Panic had woken Rhys at three a.m. The smell of her charred skin lingered in his nostrils the way bonfire smoke lingers in clothes. He sat and looked at Kier’s house for a long time. Nothing moved. No sign of life. His eyes moved to Elsie’s house. A thought flitted like a
shadow through his mind, just out of reach.
He sat and thought about the photographs for a long time too. It could be a distant family relation. These things happened. But that exact? Was that possible? Don’t genes get watered down as generations pass? Different families making different children. Does Kier come from a family of inbreeding? That would make a lot of sense. More sense than the alternative. He tried to shake the ridiculousness from his head.
Night-time creaks and groans of the house made Rhys jump and jitter. By six a.m. he could bear it no longer. Couldn’t bear to look at Kier’s still house, couldn’t bear the pressure of Anna’s distain seeping through the wall. The look of crazy in her eyes, a look she’d aimed right at him.
Is anything Kier said true?
Rhys needed someone to talk to. Someone who wouldn’t judge him, laugh in his face. He needed someone to tell him everything would be okay. There was only one person. Someone who promised never to judge or question him. Who promised to always tell him the truth. He needed to see her so much it hurt.
‘Son?’ says Elsie as she opens the door to Rhys. He isn’t her son of course. She has no children. Rhys is as near as it gets. She loves him without question. Rhys is twitchy, panicked. His eyes dart around the street. Is there something wrong with his children? Please god don’t let there be anything wrong with the children. Why else would he call so early? Rhys pushes into the hall, deadlocks the door, slides the chain across.
‘Rhys?’ He blinks away tears as he turns to her. ‘Is it the children?’ He shakes his head, he nods his head, he shrugs. His face crumbles in on itself.
‘Oh Elsie,’ is all he says. She takes him in her arms and holds him tight, feels her shoulder grow damp with his tears.
She gives him sweet tea when he asks for coffee. He eats chocolate digestives even though he says he’s not hungry. He sits in silence. Shivers under the thick blanket. She rubs his hands. They listen to the tick of the mantelpiece clock.
‘It’s all going wrong and I don’t know how to stop it, and that’s my job, I should know, shouldn’t I?’ Rhys looks at his fingers. ‘It’s like everything is slipping slightly out of reach. There are too many things I can’t work out, can’t understand. Things that sound unreal, stupid, crazy.’
‘Tell me.’ Rhys shakes his head.
‘Their faces, you should see their faces, these poor women.’ His eyes dart up. ‘Of course you shouldn’t see them, no one should see them. No one should suffer like… And the man who was in charge, Detective Inspector Andrews, everyone thinks he’s mad, I thought he was mad, but now….’
They sit in silence. Rhys stares at nothing.
Elsie always knew this day would come.
‘And what does that mean, really, what does it mean? What does it say about me? He was definitely real, so very real…’ Rhys looks at his fingertips again, suddenly pulls at his sleeve. ‘He did this.’ Rhys looks at his wrist like he’s never seen it before. ‘But how…? He held me here, Elsie. Like this.’ Rhys takes her wrist between his thumb and forefinger. ‘And when he let go, there were blisters, a burn, kind of.’ They both look at his unmarked wrist. ‘The dreams, that’s where he came from.’
‘Dreams?’ Elsie’s blood runs cold. Rhys laughs.
‘Nightmares now I guess. It was all so beautiful when it started…’ Elsie shivers. Rhys doesn’t notice, his eyes appear to be looking at something faraway. He wouldn’t notice if the devil himself walked into the room. Which of course, he already has.
Rhys’s words bleed with words Elsie has heard before. For a moment the hand she holds becomes someone else’s. A hand held under her smooth young skin as she struggles to give comfort. She blinks. Her hand is wrinkled once more.
‘Anna thinks I’m losing my mind, of course. She hasn’t said the words. She doesn’t need to. I’m not thought, am I?’
Elsie shakes her head. Rhys smiles sadly.
‘And it all comes back to him… He’s there in the dreams, but is also real. He did this, remember?’ A shake of his wrist. ‘They were there, honestly they were.’ He pulls his sleeve back down.
The stone hand starts to squeeze Elsie’s heart.
‘This man, I have met him, you know… But I’ve already said that, haven’t I? Do you know what he said? Of course you don’t how would you? He said he isn’t a man at all.’ Rhys laughs again, a joyless sound. ‘And Jenny, he made Jenny real, so real…’ Rhys’s eyes shine wet, then his jaw tightens. ‘Then he threatened them, my wife, my children. Propositioned me in exchange for their lives. He is everywhere and nowhere. He is real, but can’t possibly be. A man who seems to have lived within his family for decades. Centuries. The same man, it has to be the same man.
Look.’ Rhys pulls a piece of paper from his pocket. Unfolds it. Pushes it into Elsie’s hand. Her throat constricts. She can’t be sure she didn’t gasp.
Then he says the word. It hangs like mist in the air. Settles like poison on her skin. Violates her senses. The word is so loud it rings in her eardrums. Spoken after being buried for so long.
Nosferatu.
Rhys is laughing. A hysterical laugh, cut with sobs. She has waited so long for this moment, her whole life. Why does it have to be him? She can feel his eyes on her. They sit in silence. She knows he is building up to the question and lets him.
‘Elsie. What happened to Fredrick?’
In spite of everything Elsie smiles at the mention of his name. The beautiful man she had loved with all her soul. Elsie was a young woman when she last saw him. They were not long married; living in the house she now shares with a cat and memories.
The years peel away around Elsie to reveal her broken heart.
‘It isn’t long after dark when the knock on the front door comes. I’m upstairs getting your mother ready for bed. She is only a child. Her parents, your grandparents, have gone out for the night. She’s sleeping over.
‘The sound of the knock stops us singing, stops us brushing each other’s hair. There’s such shouting coming from downstairs. I tell her to stay in the room, not to leave under any circumstance.
‘He’s in the front room. The creature. He casts great shadows on the walls. Fills every speck of space.’ Elsie stops. Has time distorted the memory? That’s not possible, right? Yet every movement, every word that’s to come, is burnt into her brain.
‘The creature is exactly as Fredrick described him when he woke night after night screaming and terrified.’ Elsie feels Rhys’s body stiffen next to her. She can’t look at him – instead she stares at the front room, seeing it as it was then, all those years ago. Seeing herself as the young woman she was.
‘What on earth is going on here?’ Elsie’s younger self demands.
‘Be quiet, please.’ Fredrick pleads. ‘Go back upstairs, this doesn’t need to concern you.’ Fredrick turns to the creature. ‘This doesn’t need to concern her.’
The creature laughs. A wheezing cackle that shakes the room. It extends its hand to Fredrick.
‘Then let’s go.’ The creature’s voice scrapes along Elsie’s bones.
Fredrick steps towards the creature. The creature turns and smiles at Elsie. A hideous smile that stretches its whole face. Exposes glistening white incisors.
Elsie screams. The creature moves to silence her before the sound is even fully out of her throat. Its hand burns ice cold across her throat.
‘Leave her!’ Fredrick shouts. ‘You touch one hair on her head and the deal is off!’ This stops the creature. It lets Elsie drop, nods a half apology. Fredrick turns to her and speaks.
‘Elsie, I love you more than you will ever know. More than the moon and the stars. I love you to heaven and back.’
‘I know that.’ Elsie goes to take a step towards Fredrick. A growl from the creature stops her in her tracks.
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘But, why?’
‘I hope that one day you will understand. One day you will be able to forgive me.’ Elsie realises she is crying. Her body shakes
with a fear she can’t place.
‘Fredrick, I don’t understand.’ Fredrick smiles. He smiles the same way he smiled the first time she met him, a smile that always wins and melts her heart. Fredrick steps to her. Touches her cheek.
‘Enough!’ The creature shouts. Anger ripples beneath the milk white of his skin. ‘We leave. Now.’
Fredrick’s fingers linger against her skin, then he and the creature step out into the dark. Fredrick looks back only once. Tears stream down his face. By the time Elsie reaches the door, they are gone. She touches the line of blisters where the creature held her throat.
Tears stream down Elsie’s face as she tells the tale. Words she has not spoken for fifty years. Rhys presses a tissue against her cheek.
‘I hear them whisper,’ Elsie continues. ‘Everyone that comes. From the neighbour who answers my screams, to the police, to my parents. They say I’m in shock, after all who wouldn’t be if their husband walked out with another man? They whisper for years. The crueller ones laugh at the accounts I give to the police.’ Elsie sniffs. ‘They mock me. For a while I was questioned as a suspect. Did I fight with Fredrick? Did I kill him?’ Elsie laughs. ‘That shows how little they knew me. They shouted it was time to confess, tell them where the body was.
‘Then they tried another tack. Did I have a lover? Had Fredrick found out? On and on, they went, round and round. I learnt it was better to say nothing. Keep my opinions to myself. They never found a body. After all he wasn’t dead. Not in the sense they meant.’ Elsie holds Rhys’s eye.
‘Fredrick worked for the police. He raised a fear with them. A man, some kind of creature was stalking him. The force laughed it off. After he vanished they wondered if he’d been paving the way to leave with another man. Hiding his own failings by pretending they were theirs.’
‘Nosferatu?’ Rhys barely whispers the word. She knows he feels stupid, crazy, saying the word out loud. She has felt stupid and crazy and alone all these years. Now she doesn’t have to. She nods.