The Dark Corners Box Set

by Robert Scott-Norton

  “No. I couldn’t. That’s the only house my daughter’s ever lived in. It’s the family home.”

  But how many years had it been a happy family home? Maybe moving to a new house might be the fresh start she needed. Somewhere where she could start new memories with Jemma.

  “I couldn’t. That wouldn’t be the right thing. It’s just buying time again.”

  “Maybe it will buy you enough time until you’re properly settled with a new job. I’ve helped lots of customers do the same thing.”

  “Old customers?”

  He laughed. She liked the sound of it. “Well, yes, mainly they’re older, but it doesn’t change the maths behind it. If it’s just you and your daughter, you’ve got lots of options. I’ve got a few nice properties in Hillside. What school does your daughter go to? She’s at high school, isn’t she?”

  “Hillside High.”

  “Right, I think you’ll do well to get a house in that area. They’re rising in value faster than any other part of Southport. Think of it as an investment.”

  She shook her head. It was just pie in the sky. There was no way she could sell her house. Adrian had helped get that house for them, even paid the deposit. He wouldn’t be happy to see her sell it and move on.

  But it’s none of his business what I do with my house. It’s not as if he’s reaching out to help.

  “It’s just an idea. Don’t worry about it. I’ll keep my eyes open for any full-time jobs that might suit.”

  “It’s not a terrible idea. It’s just something I’ve given no thought to.”

  “Scary?”

  She nodded. “A little.”

  “And whilst you’re also looking for work, it’s a lot to take on. I understand.”

  He smiled and went to the kitchen. “Do you want a drink?”

  Judy lifted her takeaway cup, realised it was empty, then set it down on the desk. “OK, that would be good.”

  Richard grinned and disappeared. The kettle clicked on, and she heard cups clinking together as he grabbed a pair from the cupboard.

  Judy settled in her chair and found that the anxiety she’d been feeling all morning had left her. There was something about this man that calmed her. Did he ever get worried by anything?

  She gazed to look out of the window and found her eyes drawn to the spot Adrian had been parked at the other day. Had he really been there for his own reasons or had he been keeping tabs on her?

  Richard placed a mug in front of her.

  “Milk no sugar?”

  “Yeah, perfect.”

  “Is it just the money that’s distracting you? If you don’t mind me saying, you seem to be someplace else.”

  “I’m just thinking about Phil.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “I’ve not talked to anyone about him, not in the way things really were. Not about how things were in the end.”

  “OK. So—”

  “But, I think maybe I do, I mean—”

  The awkwardness was a chasm that spanned between them.

  “If you don’t want to now, you can drop in another time, or maybe over a drink.”

  “Phil was a control freak,” she blurted out. “His family think he was a saint who worked hard to provide for me and Jemma, but the truth was he could never see us living any part of our life without his input. I never wanted to give up my teaching career, but Phil convinced me that with the salary from his dad and the promise of a future partnership in the business, there was no need for me to work. The best place for me was at home, raising Jemma.

  “And to be honest, after having Jemma, that sounded like the ideal. I’d be free of all the pressures that most mums have of trying to occupy their children and find them the best childcare they could afford but still making it worthwhile going back to work. Only, I didn’t realise that I was giving up my colleagues. They were my main social network, and I became isolated. By the time it would have been appropriate to let the school know whether I was going to go back, I’d changed my mind and was ready to return, but Phil had already made his mind up. In his eyes, we’d agreed months before that we would do things the way he’d laid down and a deviation wouldn’t work out.”

  “Sounds like a bit of an idiot.”

  “That was just the start of it.”

  Suddenly, music blared from the little kitchen at the back of the office. Dire Straits, Money for Nothing. Richard hurried to turn the radio off. “I don’t know what happened there. Sorry.”

  When he sat back down, Judy had fallen silent. The interruption had come at the right time. She’d said too much and couldn’t continue talking about her private life to a stranger.

  “What’s the matter?” Richard asked.

  “Nothing, just spooked me.” But she was thinking of darker thoughts. Of the kinds of thoughts that a woman who’d been on the brink of spilling the secrets of her marriage. But there was something else.

  That was Phil’s favourite song.

  Coincidences. You’re finding coincidences and looking for patterns in things that aren’t there.

  “Did you ever get married?” Judy asked.

  Richard shook his head. “There’s been a few possible contenders over the years, but never got the nerve to actually propose or anything. Guess, that was never meant to be. I think I’m a bit too set in my ways now to settle down with someone.”

  “People are getting married for the first time later and later. And besides, who says marriage is all that, anyway? Nothing to stop you finding the right someone and just being with them. You don’t need a marriage certificate to have a great relationship. Trust me, that piece of paper is more a burden than the weight of being single.”

  “You don’t regret getting married do you?”

  Did she regret it? Judy had asked herself that a few times in her life. And there was never an easy answer. If I’d never have married, I wouldn’t have stuck around long enough to have Jemma. And Jemma was the world to her. The cost would be too great.

  “I’d have got married,” she replied. “But I’d have kept my options open. It’s important to remember that you have a life before marriage, and you can have one after marriage.”

  The office phone rang and startled them both. Richard reached over to pick up the receiver and spoke to the caller, his professional brusque business tone taking charge.

  Why have I come here? she thought. Is it really just to talk to someone who will not judge me?

  “I’ll get going,” she said lightly, then before he could get to his feet and stop her, she was gone, letting the shop door close behind her.

  21

  The figure in her room was on top of her again, breathing that death breath into her lungs, letting the foetid stench of decay and soil and rot spray over her. Lisa tried to scream, but her mouth was frozen. She tried to force back against the skeletal hands that had pinned her arms to the bed, tried to push back with all her strength. But all she managed was tiring her muscles until she could fight no more.

  The dream ended as it had to, with Lisa reaching for the light and fighting for her breath and wanting to scream out to Ellis for help.

  Had she screamed? There had been a noise that had woken her, had that been her own struggling sounds or something else?

  A cry like a baby’s painful sobs came from outside. Lisa froze in her bed, trapped beneath the sheets, not wanting to move, not sure whether she could. The sound repeated, a desperate sad wailing noise. She knew what it was.

  Jasper was in pain. Her phone said it was a little after two and she held onto it like it was a lifeline. Ellis was out. He’d texted earlier to say he was staying at Nina’s flat. Who could blame him? But that meant she was in the house on her own and she didn’t like that.

  Nor had she let the cat out.

  It might not have been Jasper. She turned the bedside light on and checked his radiator hammock where he’d be asleep when not on the bed. But it was empty.

  “Jasper?” She hated how desper
ate her voice sounded in an empty house. What would she do if she heard someone reply?

  The noises continued. It could be the noise he made when defending his territory. He would do that if trapped inside and seeing a strange cat cross the garden. It was a clear warning to the intruder to vacate the space quickly before he unleashed a cat hell upon them.

  She’d locked the kitchen door. He couldn’t get to the cat flap. He couldn’t be outside.

  But you know that’s him. You can’t just ignore it; you will have to go and look. He sounds in pain. You can’t wait until morning.

  Shit and damn and buggery bollocks. Yes, OK. Right then. She hurried out of bed, grabbed her stripy dressing gown and switched on her phone’s torch. At the threshold of her bedroom, she hesitated. Ellis’s bedroom door was open. Had it been like that earlier when she’d gone to bed? She couldn’t be certain.

  The light switch was at the end of the short passage from her bedroom to the landing proper. Only about three metres, the length of the wall of the bathroom that adjoined her bedroom. But those three metres were in darkness. There was minimal light seepage coming through the open doorway of Ellis’s bedroom. That room was on the front of the house with windows looking out onto the street. The amber glow from the streetlamps should be seeping into the house, but there was nothing. It was like a sponge was soaking up all the residual light.

  At the light switch, she flicked on the main landing light, and relaxed as the illumination cast away the shadows.

  She was on my chest. The woman that’s been visiting me in my room. The entity living in my house.

  A chill ran through her and she pulled the belt of her dressing gown around her before slipping her phone into the dressing gown pocket. This entity didn’t feel benevolent. It wanted something. Did it want her gone? Was that all it was? Because, she couldn’t see herself moving out anytime soon. She’d never had to look for a place on her own without her dad and going back to him to ask for help wasn’t an option. It might not have been his fault that her birth parents were dead, but he’d kept the news from her until he could keep it no longer. How long would he have stayed quiet if she hadn’t started looking into her past? She knew the answer to that. It would still have been a secret.

  She stood at the top of the stairs and flicked the light switch that should have turned on the light at the base of the stairs.

  Nothing.

  Shit. Her heart rate sped up, and she swallowed, suddenly thirsty.

  There was an unfamiliar noise coming from somewhere downstairs. It took her a moment to place it, then she realised it was running water. She once again retrieved her phone and turned on the torch, before taking those steps downstairs.

  A sudden burst of wind rattled the letterbox. She startled, then caught herself being ridiculous and continued, trying to focus on her mission. Get Jasper safe.

  At the bottom of the stairs, the light from her phone’s torch cast a strange focused light on her surroundings. A stark white halo leading all too quickly to a falling umbra and then the unknowable shadows.

  A louder insistent meowing sounded and she hurried along the hallway, stopping as soon as she entered the back room. The door to the kitchen was wide open. But more worryingly, so was the back door to the house. The noise she was hearing was the hose pipe fixed to the outside tap. It had been turned on, but the tap leaked and sprayed out at the point of connection, making it a wet job to turn the thing on or off.

  There’s someone in the house. An intruder has broken in. That’s why Ellis’s door was open.

  The panic hit her then. She listened but couldn’t hear anybody moving around upstairs.

  They’ll have heard you moving around, they know you’re awake. They’re probably shitting themselves now, thinking how they can get away with whatever they’ve nicked without being caught.

  But had they targeted her house? Did they know that she was here on her own? If they’d been in Ellis’s bedroom, they knew that at least one of the house’s occupants was absent.

  Without thinking through the possible outcomes of a burglary gone wrong, Lisa ran out into the garden, no longer feeling safe within her home. Spray from the leaking tap caught her as she stepped barefoot onto the patio and she cursed at the cold.

  Everything felt different in the garden in the night-time.

  “Jasper?” she hissed into the indistinct shapes of the garden. Her eyes hadn’t yet adjusted to the gloom, but she didn’t have time to do that, anyway. She needed to find her cat and get the hell out of here.

  Burglars usually have someone on watch outside the house.

  Shit. Hadn’t thought of that. She spun around, throwing the light about her, wondering whether to shout to the neighbours for help.

  Call the police.

  She would do that. But that would mean giving up the light from her phone and she wasn’t prepared to do that yet.

  The spray from the leaking tap was noisy now that she was outside. It would help to obscure anyone that might be out here. Decisively, she went to the tap and turned it off. Then with the water off, she looked at the hosepipe and realised it had been unravelled.

  Strange thing for a burglar to do.

  The cat meowed again. Outside, it sounded different to how it had sounded from her bedroom. There was something not right about it, like the acoustics were distorted somehow.

  The unravelled hosepipe trailed to the back of the garden, leading away from the house. She followed it, shining the torch along its path to see where it led. The garden shed was sited several metres from the fence at the back of the garden, twenty metres from the house and the hosepipe led all the way around to the far side of the shed.

  Where the cat noises were coming from.

  Suddenly, it came to her why Jasper didn’t sound right.

  She ran across the grass, ignoring the cold on her feet. At the corner of the shed, she turned and almost bumped into the water butt, a huge blue plastic container that had been fixed in place to catch the runoff water from the shed and should be used to water the plants. Not that Lisa ever did any of that. The butt was a relic from the previous owner.

  But the lid was off, and the end of the hosepipe had been draped over the top, leading down inside.

  “Jasper?”

  The cat replied, and Lisa peered over the top of the water butt, shining her light inside.

  Jasper was standing on his back legs, pawing to get enough purchase to get out. When he dropped back, she could see the water was three inches high, enough to cover most of his legs. Jasper was soaked.

  What bastard would do this to a cat?

  It was no accident. The lid was never removed. There was never a need to. A tap at the bottom was used to drain the barrel. She turned the tap now and saw the slow drizzle of water emerge. It would take it down to an inch. But she still had to get him out. The butt was huge and heavier than it looked being made from heavy grade plastic, but eventually, Lisa got it to tip onto its side, supporting it all the way.

  Jasper darted out, not interested in staying behind for hugs. From the speed of him, she guessed he was OK, only his pride had been injured.

  She turned back towards the house, aware that this was the middle of the night and she was very exposed in her nightclothes in the garden. You need to get back inside and call someone. This wasn’t an accident. Someone wants to scare you. Now she’d finished rescuing Jasper, she could feel her heart thudding in her chest, expanding and falling and her ribs strained under the pressure. Her airways felt constricted, it was difficult to breathe.

  I’m having a panic attack, she thought, a bloody panic attack. She’d never suffered with asthma but knew from her experience with panic attacks the pure fear of not being able to draw enough air into your lungs. That’s what this felt like now, that someone had sucked all the air out of the night, leaving her drawing down on void.

  She staggered to the back door, then halted in her tracks. Someone was standing in the kitchen. A figure different in stature
to the one she’d seen in her room. This was broader shouldered. It was a man. The face hidden by shadow, the light coming from behind him, then that light shut off leaving the man-silhouette hard-framed in the doorway. He was in her house and she was stuck in the garden with no way out. In these terraces, there was no way round to the front without going through the house. Her only option would be to go over the fence at the back or the sides into her neighbours.

  Anger hit her like a jab in the arm, and she pushed aside the fear.

  “Get the hell out of my house!” she shouted, her voice cutting across the distance between them, to her ear, not sounding brave enough or strong enough to have any meaning. What if he came after her? What if this wasn’t a burglar? What if there were other things on his mind?

  The kitchen door started to close, and she ran for it, picking up a fallen spade from the garden where she’d planted a bush. Brandishing that, she felt more confident, but she would not reach the door in time.

  The door slammed, the handle raised, and she heard the lock turn as she banged into it. Her shoulder stung with the impact.

  “Bastard!” she called through the glass.

  Then she gasped.

  A face obscured by the frosted glass flashed in the window half of the door. The intruder was only an inch away from her and she dropped the spade in shock, realising that she had been so close to being stuck in the house on her own with the intruder.

  Her panic reasserted herself and the outside suddenly seemed very large again, too large, pressing down on her with its openness, threatening to engulf her with the dark open space.

  Stumbling backwards, she stepped back out onto the grass, ignoring her cold feet on the wet grass.

  The face slunk back from the glass. Movement caught her eye above, and she looked up to her bedroom window.

  There, a second figure stood framed in the window, this silhouette was surely the woman. There were two of them, working together. What the hell did they want with her?

  That figure moved backwards, hiding into the reaches of her room where she couldn’t see because of the angle. She moved back, further into the garden, straining her neck to see further into the bedroom, trying to make out the figure.