House of Spines

by Michael J Malone

  ‘Good man,’ said Dad and nudged him with his arm.

  Ranald felt warmth fill his chest and head. Everything was okay. His father still loved him. He ducked his head to hide the smile that was spreading across his face and reached for another errant blade of grass.

  ‘Am I going to be mad like Mum?’ he asked, the words escaping his mouth before the thought occurred that he should stop them.

  His father sat back on his heels and sighed a deep, long sigh. ‘Mum is just very, very sad, son.’

  Which Ranald knew was true; she’d kept him awake much of the previous night, crying on the other side of the thin bedroom wall.

  ‘But sometimes she’s happy too, right?’ He studied his father’s face. ‘Like the night we were dancing?’

  Dad took some time to answer. Ranald knew that he was trying to protect him by finding the right words. But he was clever, wasn’t he? He would be able to understand, whatever explanation Dad came up with.

  ‘Her brain works differently, son. Sometimes she’s just so happy she can barely hold it all in, but then, for no reason at all, her brain switches and goes the opposite way, and she feels … too much sadness for her to cope with.’

  ‘Will I be like that, then?’ He had to press the question now; now that Dad was prepared to talk about it. ‘Sometimes I feel really, really happy.’ An image of his mum came to him as she danced in the garden, her face turned to the moon, bathing in its light.

  ‘Nah, you’re a McGhie. We’re a sensible lot.’ Dad ruffled Ranald’s hair and he felt some soft pieces of soil crumble from his father’s big hand, through his hair and onto his scalp, as if Dad’s words were being sanctified by the very earth itself.

  You’re saying that because you don’t want me to worry, he wanted to say. Everybody knew that Ranald, with his mother’s pale skin, dark hair and high cheekbones, was every inch his mother’s son.

  All these memories. He stood up once more and looked out across the darkening landscape, the blue-grey clouds were closer than ever. Was the move to this big, perturbing house – the place his mother had grown up in – reawakening the fears he’d suppressed for so long? Was that what all his dreams were about? His apparent sleepwalking?

  Something occurred to him. Perhaps he had come up to the tower room when he was sleepwalking the previous night? It would explain why he’d automatically headed up here when he’d run from the darkness of the corridor a few minutes before. Perhaps he’d found this notebook on his earlier visit, read it, absorbed the words and then regurgitated them a few hours later? That was a rational explanation, wasn’t it…?

  But even he couldn’t believe the human mind was that convoluted.

  So what, then?

  He needed to speak to someone. Talk this over. Maybe if he heard the words said out loud that would chase his worries back into the shadows.

  He tucked the notebook back in place, left the tower room and climbed back down the stairs, all the while acutely aware that in the massive space of this house he was the only living being.

  Back in his bedroom he changed into some exercise gear and charged down to the fitness suite, set on using physical exercise to escape the turmoil in his head.

  He started with press-ups, burpees and sit-ups.

  Then chest press, shoulder press, squats and bicep curls. And back to body-weight movements that would get his heart and lungs working, and turn his thoughts off.

  He realised that there wasn’t a decent pattern of movement to any of this and sat down, breathless. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d worked out like that.

  To finish off, he stepped under the shower to wash off his sweat, then, naked, jumped into the pool. He splashed about and then swam to the window end, and, leaning against the edge, gazed out.

  He looked across the expanse of garden. All of this and no one to share it with. He thought about Martie. He’d had no word from her since she’d left the other day. Of course, there was the poor signal issue up here. Perhaps she was sending him messages and they just weren’t getting through? Or maybe it was deliberate. She wasn’t sending him any messages for fear of suggesting she was still interested in him.

  Perhaps it was time to accept facts. It had been three years they’d been apart now. That ship had sailed.

  Still, it would be nice to share all of this with someone – friends; or even with someone special.

  He thought back to his time in the flat. He couldn’t remember craving company while he was there. Had the drugs anesthetised him to life? While he was on them they provided a numbness that meant he wasn’t concerned about, well anything really. He fed himself, worked and slept and didn’t care that was all his life consisted of. Didn’t even notice. Apart from the occasional visit from Donna, he was mostly alone, and he had been fine with it.

  Was all of this empty space emphasising just how much he was on his own?

  He could go down to the stables and visit the Hacketts, perhaps. Pretend he was just passing. Getting to know the place. Wondering if he could borrow some sugar?

  What he should do was check his emails and see if his agent had sent him anything about the proposal he had been talking about. He rolled that thought across his mind a couple of times then decided be couldn’t be bothered.

  He hauled himself out of the pool, collected a towel and went outside so the sun could dry his skin. As his head hit the back of the lounger, he heard a voice.

  ‘Helloooo. Helloooo.’

  He sat up just as a woman came round the corner of the house. It was Liz. When she saw him she gave a broad smile.

  ‘Hey, handsome. I was just passing.’ Her eyes were sparkling. ‘And I wondered if you might like to repay the … compliment … I gave you earlier.’

  They made it up to the bedroom. Eventually.

  Afterwards, he rolled off Liz, chest heaving and slick with sweat.

  ‘Woman, you are insatiable,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah,’ she smiled. ‘That’s what comes after twenty-five years of marriage to a man who prefers the entertainment at the nineteenth hole of his local golf course.’

  She laughed at her statement, imbuing it with a humour it clearly lacked; Ranald couldn’t help but hear the pain behind it. He turned over onto his stomach and looked up at her as she propped herself up on the pillows.

  ‘Twenty-five years?’ he said. ‘What, did you get married when you were fifteen?’

  ‘You’re a charmer, Mr Ranald … you’re not a Fitzpatrick, so what is your surname?’

  ‘McGhie. But you can call me … I dunno … babes? Darling?’

  Liz snorted.

  Ranald coughed. Made a face of apology. ‘Too early for endearments?’

  She cocked her head to the side and looked as if she was tasting the words. ‘You think too much.’ She smiled. ‘Right. A shower. You stay here and snooze.’

  Ranald grunted in response and, burrowing into the mattress, closed his eyes. ‘Sounds like a plan.’

  It felt like only moments later that he woke to Liz shaking his shoulder.

  ‘Ran, Ran, Ran!’

  The note of fear in her voice roused him instantly. He sat up. She was holding a towel to her breasts. Water was dripping off her onto the carpet, and her hair was slick with shampoo.

  ‘I need to get the hell out of here.’ Her whole body was shaking.

  ‘What’s wrong? What happened?’ Ran jumped out of the bed and pulled her to him.

  ‘In the bathroom,’ she pointed, her fingernail almost a blur, so violently was she trembling. ‘There was this noise. Children crying.’

  ‘It must be a cat. Or a fox or something.’

  She looked at him, pleading. Her eyes filling with tears. ‘It was coming from inside the walls. It was a child. A child was crying.’

  14

  That night, nothing he could do or say would allay Liz’s terror at the strange noises she claimed to have heard coming from the walls. Ranald was in turns supportive, cajoling and calm. It was a big house. Ma
ssive. These old places conjured up all kinds of strange noises, he told her. Floorboards creaked, walls groaned, air in the pipes squealed. It was an aural feast that could lend itself to all kinds of ghostly imaginings, and none of it should be given credence. But in his mind, he was uttering a string of curses. How could she be so suggestible? What he didn’t want to do was agree with her – tell her that he had been experiencing his own sense of uneasiness almost every day since he moved in.

  Liz refused any of his practical explanations and insisted that she needed to go home. He stood on the drive, reluctant to go back inside, helpless and alone as her car sped away through the twilit fields.

  Two miserable, lonely weeks passed. After that last evening, Liz became a virtual stranger. They’d pass each other in the supermarket at the Cross, or going in or out of the café, and Ranald would try to speak to her, but she offered him nothing, barely giving him a nod.

  Outside the supermarket one day, he stood in her path and insisted they have a conversation about what had happened. She flicked her hair back and simply said she had heard what she had heard. It was like a child was trapped behind the wall. She’d had repeated nightmares over the past couple of weeks about it, each more vivid than the last.

  ‘Sorry, Ran,’ she said. ‘That house gives me the willies. There’s something wrong up there.’ And judging by her expression it seemed she was extending that sense of wrongness to him too.

  After they parted and he headed home, he couldn’t help thinking her description of the house was correct.

  His great-uncle’s gift had somehow become a trap.

  And then, as he had done repeatedly over the past two weeks, he thought about the poem in the notebook. Didn’t that simply reinforce everything Liz was saying? Perhaps he should speak to his old neighbour, Donna. He remembered her telling him all about ‘connected-mind theory’ – the belief that we all, often without realising it, tap into the same universal consciousness. Perhaps she would be able to explain away the fact he and his great-uncle had written virtually the same words, in the same kind of notebooks.

  But what if she didn’t? What if she held his arm in that way she did, stared into his eyes as if he were nuts and argued that he should be back on the medication.

  He sighed; no way was he going there. The anti-depressants and anti-psychotics he’d been prescribed over the years were evil. He was no longer going to be a sucker for the lies of big pharma and government. They were only interested in huge profits and keeping the population docile. The responsibility for his health lay with him. Clean eating, exercise and work, that was the way forward. That was how he was going to maintain his equilibrium.

  But what if the dreams, the sleepwalking – finding himself over and over again in odd places around the house – didn’t stop?

  He came to a halt in the middle of the lane. The green hedges formed a thick, soft barrier on either side, but through a gap, in the distance, he could just see the tower room, floating above the trees, like a siren to tempt the weary onto the rocks below.

  He didn’t want the dreams to stop. Yes, they were disturbing, if he thought about them logically. But he couldn’t help but be honest with himself: he enjoyed the time he spent in them. Each evening he looked forward more and more to what might greet him in his sleep. His dreamscape was becoming ever more reassuring. Seductive. And desperately satisfying.

  Even when he was awake and going about his daily routine, the woman in the mirror was there, like an aftertaste from his dreams. Her perfume hung in the breeze that curled around the garden, her soft, low voice woven into the pattern of birdsong and chirruping insects.

  No, he thought, I don’t want the dreams to stop.

  They lingered in his mind, holding his loneliness at bay. When they were with him it didn’t matter that he had no meaningful contact with anyone else. Sure, he wandered to the Cross every couple of days, but the odd word with the café waitress didn’t count. And, yes, he saw the Hacketts about the house and garden. But they didn’t really engage with him. They were pleasant enough, but they held him at arm’s length. A word here. A sentence there. God forbid that they should spend any more time in each other’s company than was strictly necessary.

  No, his dreams were a positive. They relieved the anxiety and stress the move had provoked in him. Just thinking about the one from the night before – the one that would surely come when he went to sleep – picked him up.

  He gave the tower another look and started walking again, noting the elation triggered by simply thinking about the dreams – about her.

  The weather since he’d move into Newton Hall had been consistently dry and unseasonably warm. He would take to the patio when he got back. Thirty minutes on his back, thirty minutes on his front. He knew that, under the weight of the sunshine, his mind would move to her presence – to the woman he sensed in his dreams. And the prospect of the bliss he knew he would feel made him pick up his pace another gear.

  He had considered – a couple of times – that he should get back into the habit of charting his moods, as his therapists never tired of recommending that he should: ‘managing himself’ as they called it. He even had an app on his laptop that he had used. When he saw the scores jump from one level to another he was supposed to take more care. Acknowledge that he was moving from stable to high; from stable to low.

  Without pausing to consider the consequence he grasped the branch of a bramble that reached out from the hedge beside him and snapped it off. He didn’t need an app. He was in a good place. Why bother?

  Then the pain registered with a gasp, and he looked down at his hand. He’d gripped the frond too tightly. Dots of blood appeared on his palm. He flexed his fingers, noting a couple of sharp pangs that hadn’t reduced after he let the plant go and used his teeth to pluck out the tiny thorns.

  He shook off the pain, wiped his hand on his shorts, turning his mind instead to her. If only she was real, corporeal. They could share the good fortune of this house together. Sit out on the patio in this heat. Then, when it got too hot, jump side by side into the pool, splashing each other. And they would talk. Talk endlessly. Or else walk silently by each other’s side, wandering these sunlit country lanes.

  He caught onto himself and shook his head. ‘Ranald you’re going crazy,’ he said, out loud. Then he thought: No you’re not. He wasn’t harming anyone. A rich internal life could be a source of contentment, couldn’t it?

  What harm was there?

  The weather did, of course, break.

  Rain fell for two days straight. The sky, as clear as a newborn’s conscience for weeks, became laden with clouds so heavy they appeared to be sinking closer to the earth with every passing minute.

  Water constantly dripped from the eaves, giant puddles formed on the drive and lawn as the parched and baked earth struggled to deal with the volume.

  Ranald’s mood took a dip too. On the third day he found himself standing at the pool door, eyes on water that fell like a thick, opaque string from the guttering above him. When he came to he questioned how long he had been there. The only clue was an ache in the soles of his feet.

  Enough, he thought. The fact that he’d been all but hypnotised by water falling from the gutter was a sign: he’d dipped into a low mood now. The temptation was to curl up on his bed – retreat into sleep; try to meet her.

  No, he had to do something. He should go for a walk. There must be an umbrella somewhere in the house.

  His journey to the Cross was uneventful.

  Inside the café, there was a different waitress, but she gave him a large smile. One that suggested a degree of familiarity.

  Desperate not to look like an idiot, but keen to understand, Ranald asked hesitantly, ‘Have we met?’

  She leaned forwards and hushed her voice so that no one else could hear. ‘Are you telling me you were high the other day?’

  He reared back, uncertain. ‘High?’ he asked.

  ‘You were the life and soul in here last time yo
u were in.’ She reached out to him and poked his shoulder. ‘Demanding we bring in a karaoke. You even asked old Agnes Weir if you could marry her.’

  ‘I did?’

  ‘Eighty-two years old and never been kissed, she said when you left. You fair made her day.’

  ‘I did?’ he repeated. It felt as if his guts were shrinking. He hoped the woman couldn’t read his cringe.

  ‘You told her you knew everybody at the BBC and you’d get them to film the wedding,’ the waitress said with a giggle.

  ‘Man,’ Ranald moaned.

  ‘That must have been some batch of weed,’ the waitress said under her breath as she moved close again. ‘You have to get me the number for your supplier.’

  Ranald tried to turn his confused frown into a smile, ordered his black coffee and took his usual inside seat, against the back wall.

  When the waitress brought his coffee, he took a sip and sat back, fighting to ignore the tremor through his mind as he replayed the conversation he’d just had with her. He crossed his arms. How had he managed to forget he’d been down here the other day entertaining everyone? God. What an idiot.

  He looked around the room. Apart from the waitress, not one other person had registered his presence. Or so it appeared. They’d probably been staring at him while the waitress was talking to him, and now they were back at their drinks, minds stewing with unanswered questions: Isn’t that the one who was behaving like a raving loon the other day? Who was he? Why was he always on his own? Why can’t he get a woman? Must have something wrong with him. Must be a deviant. How can he afford to be in here in the middle of the day? Doesn’t he have a job?

  He told himself to shut up with all the negativity.

  But they were looking at him, he thought, as he tried to distract himself by stirring his coffee. Of course they were. They knew who he was and they were eaten up with jealousy. They’d probably heard about his bout of manic behaviour and put it down to the rich kid showing off. He had come from nowhere and he now owned all of that. Facebook and Twitter would be full of all kinds of nonsense. He was weird. He was dangerous. They would be posting any old nonsense.