The Dark Corners Box Set

by Robert Scott-Norton

  Do we look like we’re on a date? Judy thought. Does it look sad people our age being on a date?

  “So, do you come here often?” Judy said, smiling at the inaneness of her comment. The ice needed to be broken.

  “Never. Someone recommended it, but I’m not sure if they were pulling my leg.”

  “I’m sure they weren’t. It’s all good.”

  “The waiter hasn’t even acknowledged us yet.”

  She looked across the table at him, wondering whether he was being serious, then saw the cheeky look in his eye and realised he wasn’t.

  “You had me going for a minute.”

  “Just a minute? I must try harder.”

  The guy was hard not to like.

  “Just a minute.”

  “Do you know what you’d like? I’ll order.”

  Half an hour later, when they’d both devoured their meals, Judy brought up the thing that had been on her mind ever since her last meeting with Richard in his shop.

  “You think you could help find me a good place in Hillside?”

  “Well, sure. Are you thinking of moving?”

  “Don’t be so surprised, it was your idea.”

  “I just was talking a lot the other day. I do that. Sometimes the spiel gets mixed up with the small talk.”

  “Was that spiel then? Do you think I should stay where I am?”

  “You said it’s a big house and you’re looking for work. Downsizing would give you some more money in the bank, but you’ll still be stung with the cost of moving. There’s the legal fees, removal fees, and of course the estate agent fees.” He smiled. “But I might know someone who could help you out with those. You also need to think about whether you really do want to move out. It’s only been a year since Phil passed. I’m guessing you’ve a lot of memories tied up in that place. You and your daughter. Maybe you should give it a little more time before deciding what to do.”

  Yes, there were certainly memories, she thought. Just a shame you can’t strip away the bad ones to leave only the good behind.

  The house had been their first together. Until then, Judy had been living on her own in a flat in Maghull, close to the school she was working at. Phil had been the most charming guy she’d ever dated and getting hitched was never in doubt from the moment they’d first met at Bethan’s Halloween party. He’d come as a zombie, with so much green face paint that it had already brushed off onto his pleasingly tight t-shirt, making the most of his muscles. She’d come as a vampire, plastic fangs that dug into her gums, and fake blood dripping down her chin.

  Four months later, they’d moved into the house, and a month after that, they’d gotten married. Fast. In hindsight, too fast. No wonder his parents had always been a little cautious with her. Before meeting Judy, Phil was known as a bit of a lady’s man, but that had never bothered her. What he got up to before, was in the past. What mattered was how he treated her.

  Turns out, you treated me like shit, she thought.

  “The house isn’t important. It’s what we hold on to in our memories that’s important,” Judy said.

  Nice. Is that what you think he wants to hear? Will that make you sound less like a psycho?

  “Have you mentioned it to your daughter?”

  “No. Not yet. Let’s just see how we get on. I take it I don’t have to have a board outside the house if I don’t want to.”

  “Entirely up to you, although it would help sell the place.”

  “Give me two weeks. I’ll find the right time to broach it with Jemma.”

  “OK. Take it at your own pace. None of this needs to happen straightaway. Look at the areas you’re interested to move to. See what you can get for your money. Then let me know, and I’ll start putting some feelers out.”

  The lights flickered in the restaurant, and the conversation around them stuttered. A chill breezed across the back of Judy’s neck and she glanced at the door, wondering whether somebody had left it open.

  “Hey, are you OK? You look pale.”

  “I’m fine. Just tired.”

  “I didn’t mean to talk shop, but that’s me all over, I guess. Never do know when to keep my mouth shut.”

  “It’s not you. I’m having a nice time.” And as if to prove it, she stood up, and headed for the bar. “Same again?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  At the counter, she ordered another couple of drinks. The restaurant was less busy now and she could get served straight away. Was she having a nice time? Talking about Phil had brought back some thoughts she didn’t want to be feeling. That she could sit having a nice meal with a nice guy after her marriage was something she couldn’t have thought of just a few weeks ago.

  So, what’s changed Judy? What’s so different now that you’re ready to move on with your life?

  The money situation was a big issue. She’d grown so used to having Phil take care of all the finances, that she was lost when he died. It had taken her a few weeks to get her head around what needed paying and when money would be leaving the account.

  And Jemma was growing up fast. In the second year at high school already, she was becoming more and more independent. There would only be a few years until she went onto university, and if that meant she was moving away, Judy would suddenly find herself living on her own in the house that Phil had chosen for her.

  The lights flickered again, and that made Judy think of Seth. She sighed, and her stomach rumbled. The time she’d spent with Seth at Ravenmeols had been the most terrifying of her life, and yet she’d survived it. Not just survived, but thrived, taking the obstacles thrown at her, and overcoming them, transforming into someone else.

  And she thought she quite liked this person. No longer the widow of a man she’d sooner forget, but as a strong woman who could forge her own path in life. Moving house was just a stage in that journey. Maybe it wasn’t about the money at all, maybe just getting away from the house where she’d nursed Phil over those last few weeks before he finally moved into the hospice was what she needed to start healing.

  Or maybe it’s the guilt. You could have helped him, but you didn’t.

  As she walked back to the table with the drinks, a smashing sounded behind her. A plate had been dropped. Somebody swore. Another voice asked where the brush pan was kept. And there standing behind the floor to ceiling windows, on the pavement outside, lit only by the amber light from the car park lighting, was the indistinct shape of a man. His frame was all too familiar.

  Judy froze.

  It’s not real. This is just your imagination messing with you. Your head is all over the place. What do you expect will happen when you start thinking of the dead?

  Not that they will show up and spy on your date.

  A hand touched her arm.

  “Need help?” Richard said, “you looked a million miles away. What are you looking at?”

  He peered across the restaurant, checking where Judy was watching.

  She tore herself away from the figure, then forced a smile. “I’m sorry, just thought I saw someone I recognised. But I got it wrong. It’s nobody.”

  As they walked back to the table, she checked again, but the figure had gone.

  26

  Something woke her. Jemma’s heart was thudding, and she dared to take a breath. Her arms had broken out in goosebumps and she felt freezing. She didn’t think she’d left the window open, but couldn’t think of why else it could be so cold.

  She listened for signs that there were others in the house and caught the sound of her mum’s heavy breathing, almost a snore. Unlike her but reassuring all the same. It had been a long time since she’d felt the need to call out to her mum in the middle of the night but that was exactly what she felt like doing now.

  If she wasn’t so scared that the something that had woken her was still here and would know for certain she was now awake.

  Beyond the noise of the snoring, there was another noise that she picked up on. It wasn’t the sound of the wind knocking the b
ay tree into the fence panels, or the tumble drier downstairs on its crease prevention cycle.

  It was the noise of someone under her bed.

  There was barely any room under her bed which had become a storage area for boxes and toys she’d grown out of but wasn’t prepared to part with. The toys that if her friends found in her room, she’d laugh them off and say they were on their way to the charity shop.

  But something was under her bed and it was moving.

  The bedroom door was ajar. The curtains were closed. There was only the faint glimmer of moonlight coming through the crack in the curtains and the night light her mum turned on every night on the landing. Nothing was out of place.

  Except, was the door a little wider than she’d left it? And had her clothes shifted from their place on the back of her desk chair? It looked like something had fallen to the floor. And the photo frame on the dressing table had moved hadn’t it? The one with her and dad had been turned around so it faced the wall. She would never have left it like that.

  Was that breathing she could hear coming from under the bed?

  If she screamed out for help, the something wouldn’t let her get out of the room without grabbing her. She’d seen enough horror movies—always at her friend’s house, never here—to know that the monsters under the bed would always try to grab the feet of the person in the bed.

  Jemma drew her feet up slowly, ever so slowly, so eventually, her knees were up against her chest.

  Then she looked at the floor. The bed was in the middle of the room. She stared at the carpet, and the rug, trying to distinguish what was pattern and what didn’t belong.

  But it was difficult from where she was positioned. She would have to move to a better spot to know for sure. There was always the chance she’d made a mistake and that the things that had been moved had been because of her mum when she came to check on her, and nothing at all to do with the imaginary thing under her bed.

  Because it was imaginary. Monsters didn’t exist.

  Ghosts didn’t exist.

  But she’d seen things these last few months that made a mockery of that argument.

  The monsters are real.

  Jemma closed her eyes and counted to ten. That should work. That will banish the thing from under her bed.

  One, two...

  A swish as something brushed against carpet.

  Three, four...

  She shivered as the temperature in the room dropped even further.

  Five, six, seven...

  A new sound to her right, about an arm’s reach from her.

  This isn’t working.

  Eight, nine...

  She opened her eyes. The woman was standing beside her bed. Her clothes were dirty. The denim dress she was wearing looking dirty, and the splotches she thought were just dirt could just as easily have been dried blood. Her hair was long, down past the shoulder, dark, but that could have been more mud clinging to it, shaping it into rats’ tails.

  But it was her face that scared Jemma the most. The skin, what there was of it, was pale like paper, but there were injuries, bits were missing, and in those missing bits, she could see the shadowy stains beneath that could have been muscle or bone.

  The thing was smiling.

  Jemma screamed and ran for the door which slammed shut before she could reach it. With desperate force, she slammed her fists into the wood, drumming away, and screamed for help. But she still couldn’t take her eyes away from the creature, it was not a woman, only a creature, the monster from under her bed. The monster in her room that wanted to hurt her.

  “Mum!” she screamed, but now she pressed her back against the door, trying to pour herself into the wood in an effort to get away from the intruder.

  The creature’s smile had gone, replaced by a scowl that froze Jemma’s blood. It tilted its head then it moved towards her. A stumbling movement, like it was only just learning how to walk again after an injury. And she might well have been injured. Whatever had happened to this creature in life must have been horrendous. Jemma knew she wasn’t in a nightmare, and she knew that the creature in her room wasn’t alive. No more than the shadowmen had been alive. But being alive was unnecessary if the thing wanted to hurt you badly enough.

  The door shook behind her. “Jemma!” Her mum’s voice was panicked and high pitched. Then, there was another voice she didn’t recognise, a man’s voice. The creature wasn’t reacting to the voices from the other side of the door. Its fixation was her and it stumbled to the edge of her bed. If it wanted, it could reach her in seconds, and yet it was taking its time. Jemma’s heart was beating so hard it was hurting her chest, making it difficult to breathe.

  “There’s someone in here.” Her voice didn’t sound like her own.

  “Stand back from the door.” Again the man’s voice.

  Then another impact, heavier this time. The door burst open and Jemma turned to see a strange man charge into the room, followed by her mum. Both were dressed only in their underwear.

  “Watch out for the—” Jemma tried to warn them both, but as she glanced back into her room, she saw the creature had disappeared, like it had never been there at all.

  27

  Well this is awkward, Judy thought as she passed a glass of milk across the table to Jemma. Both her and Richard were sat at the kitchen table, Richard having taken the time to get dressed and therefore looking terribly out of place in his shirt and trousers whilst Jemma and Judy were both in their dressing gowns. He was the impostor, and it embarrassed Judy to think she’d snuck him in whilst Jemma was asleep.

  This isn’t like me. I don’t do these kinds of things.

  The kettle boiled, and she poured water into two mugs, stirring away, delaying the moment when she’d have to join them at the table and explain what was going on. Thankfully, Jemma pulled the plaster on that particular cut.

  “How long have you been seeing my mum?”

  Judy glanced and caught Richard’s expression. How truthful was he about to be? They’d known each other a matter of days and had ended up in bed together.

  Did that make Judy a slut? Was that what Jemma would think of her? This was the first time since Phil had died that she’d ever been with another man and the first time Jemma had ever known her to be in a relationship with anyone else.

  What had begun as a night of passionate healing for them both had been turned into some ugly thing that she just wanted to forget.

  Perhaps I should ask Richard to leave. This should be something to work through with Jemma on our own as a family.

  “Not long,” Richard replied diplomatically. That should save a few blushes.

  “How long is not long?”

  “Less than a week. Your mum came into my shop on Saturday when you were at your singing group.”

  “It’s a drama club.”

  “OK. Sorry, at your drama club. We just seemed to hit it off.”

  “Getting together with someone in a few days seems pretty quick to me.”

  “It is. But, I guess, we’ve known each other from school, and sometimes that’s the way things work out.”

  “You’re her first boyfriend.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  Is that what he is? A boyfriend?

  “So, you’d better be nice to her.”

  “I will. I promise.”

  “Promising will have to do. You’re a stranger and you’re in my house but Mum wanted you here, so that’s OK, I guess.”

  “Right.”

  “But, you’re on a warning.”

  Judy came to stand beside her daughter and flashed an admonishing look at her. “Jemma! You don’t get to talk like that.”

  Jemma looked up at her mum and there was still that fear in her eyes from the bedroom earlier. “I mean it. You’ve been through enough with dad and—” her voice trailed off, but she recovered and said, “—the other things. You can’t have a boyfriend mess you around. Men aren’t worth it.”

  Richard couldn’t contain his
laugh, well more of a chuckle than a laugh, but Jemma threw him a suspicious look all the same. “I’ll let that pass because you got me out of my bedroom.”

  “I’m sorry.” Talk of the bedroom seemed to suck warmth from the room.

  Judy sat and curled her hands around her mug. “What did you see in there?”

  Jemma didn’t look like she much wanted to talk about it and Judy found it difficult to blame her for that. Shutting the fears inside was one way of dealing with it, but it wouldn’t help them in the long-term.

  “Did you not see it?”

  “I didn’t see anything,” Richard said. “I’m sorry. What did you see? Was it a nightmare?”

  This time, both Judy and Jemma gave him a look as if to say that that was just about the stupidest thing they’d heard in a long time.

  “It wasn’t a nightmare,” Judy said. “Tell us.”

  Jemma closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them and they glistened like melting ice. Judy wanted to hug her and tell her not to worry about it, but she knew that if they didn’t worry about it, the problem was unlikely to go away. Jemma glanced at the kitchen door. “Do you mind if we shut that and turn on the big light?”

  Richard hurried to his feet, glad to be of some use, and did as instructed. When he settled back down again, Jemma talked. She held nothing back, starting with the noise under her bed that had woken her, and ending with the moment Richard knocked open the door and found her braced against the wall, hands up protectively in front of her face.

  Eventually, Richard spoke. “There wasn’t anyone in your room. It must have been a dream.”

  “It wasn’t a dream,” Judy replied. “I’ve been sensing something around me for a few days, ever since Lisa got in touch and invited us out to dinner.”

  “Who’s Lisa?”

  “My sister-in-law.”

  “What’ve you seen, Mum?”

  What had she seen? Pulling apart the emotion from the physical was tricky.

  “Felt more than seen. Like I’m not alone when the house is empty.”