Richard looked confused. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“But you’re talking as if stuff like this is real. Only it’s not real.”
Judy almost rolled her eyes, but instead she exchanged a look with Jemma. “It’s not important whether you believe this. But you need to realise that what both Jemma and myself have experienced is real. You can come up with explanations that will make you feel better about it all, but that’s for you to do. I won’t do that for you.”
Richard didn’t respond, only took a sip from his coffee and glanced up at the ceiling. You’re not sure though are you? Judy thought. You’ve sensed something as well, but you can’t quite put your finger on what.
Judy wondered if it was safe to stay in the house. It had been on her mind ever since she’d seen the shadowmen, but that had been months ago, and the Almost Doors hadn’t made an appearance since Adam Cowl had been sent into hiding. Jemma had expressed no interest in moving out of the house but then why would she? This was the only home she’d ever known. Her ties to it were far stronger than Judy’s own.
“I’m listening. Tell me what you’ve experienced,” Richard said. His tone was less confrontational, and she thanked him silently for that.
“I was looking into Lisa and Phil’s adoption. Lisa’s been trying to track down the adoption agency that her dad used back in the seventies. I wondered whether Phil had kept any paperwork that he hadn’t mentioned. I was going through his stuff. But, when I was up there, I got a sense that I wasn’t alone. It was dark, and I was only using a torch, but the attic fell cold, and across the space, at the back of the attic, I thought I saw someone.”
“There’s someone in our attic and you didn’t tell me?”
“No. Absolutely not. There’s no one up there. But for a moment, I wasn’t sure.”
“You thought you saw, or you actually saw?”
It was a key difference and a consideration that Judy hadn’t been concerned with. Deciding whether it had been a figment of her imagination or something more real would have a bearing on how she felt about living in the house.
“I saw it,” she concluded.
“What did it do? Did it try to communicate?”
Judy shook her head. “It was just a shadow. I looked away, and it had gone. But I don’t think it meant to hurt me. I don’t think it can.” But was she willing to bet the wellbeing of her child on that hunch? The shadowmen had been able to hurt people when such a thing seemed incredulous.
“I think you’re wrong, Mum. I think it wants to hurt us. It came after me in my room, it was hiding under my bed. Why would it do that if not to hurt me?”
Judy threw a look at Richard, but he shrugged as if to say I have nothing. This was not what he was expecting on their first night together. I’ve probably scared you off for good now haven’t I?
“It disappeared when we came into your room. That’s a good thing. That means it doesn’t like us being able to see it. I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”
“I’m not going back in my bedroom.”
“That’s fine. You can sleep with me.”
Jemma glanced across the table at Richard.
“I can get going.”
“No. I don’t want you to go,” Jemma replied then to her mum said, “Could he sleep in the spare room?”
“You’d be very welcome.”
Please don’t hate me, but please don’t leave us.
He grinned awkwardly like it was masking something else, fear perhaps.
“Sure,” he said. “No problem.”
28
The next morning, Judy found Richard in the kitchen, washing the mugs from last night in the sink, whilst staring out into the garden.
“Thank you,” she said, and wandered over to give him a peck on the cheek. His stubble scratched and he could have done with a shower, but there was a manliness to it she enjoyed.
“Did you get any sleep?”
“None. I kept the light on all night.” He chuckled. “I’m sorry that Jemma had to meet me like that. I shouldn’t have stayed over.”
“But I wanted you to stay over. Jemma’s tougher than she looks. And besides, she appreciated you being here after what happened. We both appreciated it.”
“I didn’t help. I don’t know what happened. Last night, we spoke about things that I can’t even begin to think about.”
Judy opened the back door and let the cool air wake her up some more.
“The way you were talking last night... You were taking it all in your stride like that was something normal.”
“There’s nothing normal about it, but I guess you could say I’m getting used to strange things happening.”
“Do you think Jemma was maybe making things up?”
“No,” she said firmly. “Not at all. She had no reason to lie.”
“And the things you described. The ghost you saw in the attic?”
“I’m not sure if it was a ghost, but I saw something.”
“But you’re still not sure.”
She sighed, then closed the door and went to the fridge, retrieving a carton of eggs and a pack of bacon. “Something happened to me last year, shortly after Phil died. I met someone who helped me see that I have a certain affinity for these kinds of phenomena.”
“You see dead people?” he said it then frowned. The idea must be so strange to you, she thought. She remembered when it was so strange to her as well.
“I know it sounds ridiculous, but it’s true.”
“And Jemma?”
“Are you asking whether she can see dead people too?”
Richard nodded.
“If she says she saw something in her room last night, I have to believe her. Based on what I know, I don’t have any reason to think she’d make it up.”
When Richard didn’t answer, she went and slipped an arm around his waist. “I’m sorry. It feels like I’ve dragged you into my weird excuse for a life.”
“You don’t need to apologise. It’s OK. I’m fine. I just don’t know what to make of it all.”
“Do you believe?” she asked tentatively.
“Honestly, I don’t know. Is that a problem?”
“No.”
I guess not, she thought, but it would make life a hell of a lot easier if you did.
She let him go and began to make breakfast for all three of them, checking the clock to see when she needed to give Jemma a call. Her daughter had fallen asleep quickly beside her, but she’d been tossing and turning all night. Every time Judy nodded off, Jemma would wake her by turning over or muttering indecipherable utterances. Today would be a struggle for both of them to stay awake.
When the clock hit seven, Judy went to nudge Jemma but found that she was already up and dressed for school.
“I’ve made breakfast,” Judy said.
“Thanks. I’m starving.”
When Jemma saw that Richard was still here and sat at the kitchen table, finishing his breakfast, there was a noticeable reaction as if she’d forgotten he was in the house. But she sat down and asked politely for him to pass the salt.
“Jemma, I’m sorry for surprising you last night? I know it must have been upsetting to find a strange man in your house.”
Jemma looked to her mum. What was that expression? Amusement? “You weren’t as scary as seeing that thing in my room.”
“Granted. But even so, I’m sorry.”
Jemma shrugged. “So is Richard your boyfriend?”
The two adults exchanged glances. This was something they hadn’t discussed. Richard was a nice guy, and it had been a long time since she’d spent any time at all with a nice guy, let alone shared her bed with one. But did this fling even have a future beyond last night? After the commotion with Jemma’s room and having Richard sleep in the spare room, probably not. Judy felt sad at the thought.
“We’re good friends,” Richard replied. “And we’ll be seeing each other again. Is that a problem?�
�� he asked gently.
“No problem. If it makes Mum happy.”
“Yes,” Judy replied. “It does.”
“Then enough with the questions or I will be late for school.” She continued tucking into her breakfast, Judy and Richard both exchanging looks. Richard didn’t have kids of his own and Judy wondered what he made of the breeziness that Jemma accepted him in their house. It was so casual that it released a little of the guilt she was holding onto.
“I best be going,” Richard said, taking his plate to the sink. “It was nice to meet you, Jemma.”
She nodded, her mouth still full of toast and bacon. Judy led Richard to the front door. When she spoke, she kept her voice low to make sure that Jemma couldn’t overhear them.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For what?”
“For not being a jerk. I didn’t know how she’d take to me bringing someone around.”
“She’s a good kid. She had a traumatic night.”
“We all did. What time do you need to be at the shop?”
He glanced at his watch, then grimaced. “I like to be there for nine. It’s never good form to open late. But I need to get back to the house first, get a change of clothes.”
“You look fine.”
“I don’t smell fine, but it’s kind of you to say so.” And then he gave her a peck on the cheek and turned to go. “I’ll call you later, if that’s OK.”
“Of course.” She closed the door and leant back against it, looking around the hallway, wondering whether the last few hours had even happened. She returned to find Jemma in the kitchen on her phone. She kissed the top of her head. “How you doing? Did you get any sleep?”
“Funny dreams.”
“I bet.”
“And no more sign of—”
“The thing in my room? No. Nothing. Do you think it was a dream? A night terror like you used to have?”
“I’m sure of it. There’s nothing in this house that could hurt either of us.” The lie was an easy one. The lies said to protect the ones we love usually are. There was a chance that what Jemma had seen had resulted from a bad dream or a night terror. Although Judy had done her best to keep her from the details of what had happened with Seth and at Ravenmeols, Jemma had undoubtedly overheard conversations between her and Seth or Malc. And there had been the time at Seth’s new house with the occult collection—that morning she’d been convinced she’d heard her dead father calling to her from the basement.
“I am sorry that you found out about Richard like that. I didn’t mean that to happen.”
“It’s fine.”
“Yeah, you say that, but I want you to know that I didn’t mean it. I got carried away.”
Jemma’s face was difficult to read. She finished her breakfast and was focused on her phone, only half in the conversation. This was typical of her, never quite being all there.
“If you like him, I don’t see the problem.”
Judy cleared Jemma’s plate from the table. “How about I set up a meal together, give you a chance to get to know him.”
“If you like.”
Don’t push it. If she doesn’t want to talk about it, don’t force her. You might not like what she has to say. Give her a chance to process it.
“If you’re too tired for school, I don’t mind calling and telling them you’re sick.”
Jemma glanced up ever so briefly, an eyebrow raised, before returning to her phone. “I’m good. I guess I’d rather be at school right now.”
“OK. If you change your mind when you get there, tell them you’re not feeling well, and I can come and pick you up.”
Later, after Jemma had left for school, Judy reflected on that morning and thought things could have been a lot worse. At least Jemma wasn’t giving her a hard time, and they’d addressed Richard staying over. Judy wondered how she’d feel if Richard became a regular fixture of her life. Judy wasn’t even sure she wanted Richard to be a regular fixture. The time in bed had been fun. He’d been gentle and held her afterwards. But she barely knew the man. After twenty years of marriage to Phil, she’d still never uncovered all his secrets. How many did a man she’d never met have?
There was one thing she needed to get to the bottom of, and quickly. As much as she’d like to think that what Jemma had seen had been a figment of her imagination, from recent experience, Judy doubted it. This life she’d been exposed to, with its strangeness and scariness, and unimaginable horror, was her thing. It wasn’t meant to be something that could hurt the people she cared about most in her life. Was this what Seth and Malc had had to experience? Seth had spent most of his adult life away from his parents, barely speaking to them. At first, she’d assumed it was because of the bad feeling between them over the death of Kelly, his sister. And Malc—he’d separated from Georgia after their last run-in with the Adherents. How much of that was Georgia wanting to get away from the horrors that gravitated towards her husband, and how much of that was Malc letting his wife and son move away so they would no longer be in the line of fire?
Upstairs, Judy paused on the landing, listening to the sounds of the house. “Is there anyone here?” she asked.
The house was silent. She could almost hear the air moving through the rooms like it was breathing. She counted the doors she could see and confirmed the number with the number she knew to be correct. There were no Almost Doors here. Those mysterious portals hid in plain sight with the strange property of people not being able to notice them unless they concentrated hard or had them pointed out by someone like Seth.
At the threshold of Jemma’s room, she hesitated. The door was open, the bedroom itself that of a typical teenager, bedclothes rumpled still, hanging half off the bed. Pyjamas on the floor, scrunched up. The dressing table with a tipped-over can of deodorant and cleansing wipes, used and discarded. Condensation clung to the window, masking the outside.
The door was high quality, solid wood and painted white. Last night, she’d tried to open it, but it had felt locked, despite not having a lock fitted. Jemma wasn’t strong enough to block the door herself, and it had taken Richard’s strength to get it open. That bit wasn’t imagined. That had happened. So, even if what Jemma had experienced had been a night terror, that didn’t explain away the door that wouldn’t open.
“Are you in here?” she asked the empty room.
There was no sign of anything unusual happening. No sudden chills. No shadows moving in the corners. She carefully lowered herself and checked under the bed for any sign that someone had been there. The bed was a simple bed frame from IKEA with a hollow space underneath. That hollow space was filled with under-the-bed container boxes that Jemma had used to store away things she didn’t use every day but didn’t yet need moving up into the loft. Nothing could have got under the bed without disturbing the boxes.
But a ghost wouldn’t be bothered by physical objects.
Judy went to the bedside table and reached behind the unit, feeling for the edge of the duct tape she knew was there. Carefully, she removed it and retrieved the voice recorder.
The recorder was still recording onto its SD card. This unit could store ten hours’ worth of material and that’s why she’d bought it, knowing that it would see through the night. Jemma had no idea she’d placed the device there, and she didn’t think she’d ever want to tell her. Jemma would no doubt freak out to think her mum had recorded her, but since seeing things at Lisa’s house, Judy wasn’t about to not investigate her own house.
She quickly made Jemma’s bed, then sat on the end of it, looking at the recorder, knowing that she had to do this but also torn at the same time.
You’ve got to know. If there was something in her room last night, you’ve got to know.
The unit had an inbuilt display that allowed her to skip back to a point in time. She chose a point about half an hour before the moment they’d burst into her room. That should be enough to listen to.
She clicked play.
There was no h
iss from the player, a nice side-effect of going digital, and it meant that she could discern the breathing sounds from her daughter. They were not the calm breathing patterns of a girl in a deep sleep, but restless and inter-cut with almost inaudible moans and half-said words.
Bad dreams, she thought almost with relief. She’s having a bad dream.
But what about the locked door?
After a few minutes of the disturbed breathing, there was another sound. Fainter, but definitely there. She set the volume to max and could hear something else alongside Jemma’s breathing.
Words.
Mumbles.
No, not mumbling, just quietly spoken. She glanced up at the room and tried to work out from where they might have originated. It was impossible to say.
Although the words weren’t spoken in Jemma’s voice, they were familiar.
“Go back to sleep,” the woman on the recording said.
29
After dropping into a couple of estate agents in Hillside, Judy headed back into town and towards Adrian’s office. If Faith and Adrian were happy to take Jemma away for a few days, she wouldn’t let the opportunity pass her by. It would do Jemma the world of good getting away from the house.
And seeing how Adrian never offered to pay for anything for Jemma, it was about time he treated her. She thought she’d stop by to let him know in person, but that wasn’t the sole reason. She wanted to ask him about Premier Adoption Services. If Adrian’s company once held offices in the same building, there was a good chance he knew more about the adoption company than he’d passed onto Lisa. He probably knew some of the people that worked there and Judy wanted to press him on some names. She could track them down and get them to help look up records.
She parked in one of the visitors’ spaces at Adrian’s office building and approached the reception. Two men were talking animatedly in the main lobby. Instinct more than anything made her hold back, then step behind the tree in front of the building. She didn’t want them to see her.
It was Adrian talking to a similarly aged man in a dark blue boiler suit. From this distance, she couldn’t make out the second man’s features, but there was something about the way he stood that suggested this was not an amicable meeting.
The Dark Corners Box Set Page 61