‘Don’t worry about a thing. What’s your name?’
‘Arthur. Arthur Bevan,’ he said, gazing into her deep brown eyes.
‘Okay, Arthur, listen to me. It’s all okay. You’ve done everything you can. Now it’s time for you to go back downstairs and carry on with your duties. In fact, I think it’s time for a tea break, isn’t it, Mr D?’
Mr D caught on immediately, and chipped in: ‘Yes. Good man, Arthur. Go and get the kettle on. Watch the TV for a few minutes.’
‘We’ll be down soon,’ Betty added, propelling him gently towards the top step. ‘Make sure you get enough mugs ready! Two sugars for me!’
Arthur nodded and started off down the steps, eyes glazed, apparently hypnotized by Betty’s silken tones. That must be her special gift. I’d better watch out, I didn’t want to wake up squawking like a funky chicken or shouting ‘Hitler!’ at inappropriate moments.
The temperature had dropped even lower, now so cold our breath steamed from our mouths in iced clouds. Justin’s goatee even looked like it had a touch of frost developing at its black point.
We could see the lights still flashing under the door, then a banging started. Like someone throwing books around, hefting them at the walls. Screaming – several people at once, men and women and children, a soulless shrieking that made us all wince and clasp our hands to our ears. Then the smashing of glass, maybe a mirror being shattered, a vase hitting the floor, or… a window being broken open.
‘Get us in there!’ I yelled, and Dan nodded in agreement. He reared back and kicked at the door, just beneath the handle. Over and over again, until his bones must have ached, and the wood finally splintered. Justin shoulder-charged it and ran into the room, his leather coat flapping round his heels.
I ran through, expecting chaos. A maelstrom of destruction. Carnage, waste, dead bodies. A bit of a mess at the very least.
Instead, the room was exactly as I’d last seen it – neat, dusty, and empty. Apart from the young woman in front of us, sitting in the window seat with a child on her lap.
They were both looking at ‘Dissection of the Dog’, poring over a disgusting colour diagram of canine intestine as though it was Enid Blyton.
The woman looked up at us and smiled. Her eyes were wide, staring, blank. No pupils. Just discs of shining pale blue, so pale it was almost white, luminous, staring out at us blindly. The child was dressed in tattered grey rags, and was trying to hide her face behind long, tangled dark hair.
‘Where are your manners, Sarah?’ said the woman, pushing her off her lap and standing up. When the little girl tried to stammer a few half-formed words, she was slapped, vicious and hard, with such force she sprawled onto the floor and started to cry. I dashed forward to help her, was grabbed by Dan, his fingers biting so hard into my arm I knew they’d bruise.
‘Wait. This isn’t right,’ he said. ‘Listen.’
In the background there was a chattering, almost a chant, of children playing, their sing-song voices rising and falling in the cadence of a nursery rhyme. Getting louder. The sounds of games: of skipping ropes whispering through the air in a giant loop; of dice hitting pavements; of balls bouncing from end-of-terrace walls.
I whirled round, looking for the other children. Scrambled to open the wardrobe doors, pushed my way into the bathroom, desperate to find them. Nothing. Just the tired swinging of wire coat hangers and the drip of a tap into a dusty tub.
The singing descended into giggling. It should have been a happy sound. Instead, it made me want to run. Far, far away.
‘They’re playing hide and seek with you!’ said the woman with the blind, shining eyes. ‘And you won’t like it if we find you – then you have to be it!’
She leaned down, whispered in the girl’s ear. She was curled up in a defensive ball, protecting herself with her skinny arms in a pose I’d seen adopted by the long-term abused before. When she didn’t move, the woman kicked her hard in her scrawny ribs, and again I strained to move forward. Again I was held back by Dan.
‘Let me go!’ I said, trying to writhe out of his now-painful grip. ‘We can’t stand here and let her do that!’
‘She’s already dead,’ said Dan. ‘And this is all part of the game.’
The woman whipped her head up, looked at Dan with what can only be called greed.
‘Yes. That’s right. This is our game, and we don’t need Sarah any more.’
The child unfurled, climbed to small, bare feet, and ran, sobbing. Straight through the wall.
‘Fuck!’ I heard Tish say. I agreed wholeheartedly.
In the background, Betty and Justin had started to mutter. I couldn’t understand them – it might have been Greek or Latin, or bloody Oompah Loompah for all I knew, but even the sound of it, mixed in with the giggles of the invisible children, terrified me. That’s what you get when you grow up watching ‘The Omen’ on the old movie channel.
‘Pray!’ Dan instructed us, moving forward towards the woman. ‘Just pray, and do it now, and mean it!’
This wasn’t a time to argue. It also wasn’t a time for subtlety, so both me and Tish immediately launched into the Lord’s Prayer. It came automatically after our years of schooling. Will joined in; deliver us from evil in triplicate. I saw he’d dropped to his knees and held his hands together in supplication.
The woman with the blank blue eyes walked – almost skipped – over to Dan, faced him head on. She had long, straight brown hair, and tilted her face up at him in a way that was stomach-churningly flirtatious.
‘Oooh. How delicious you are,’ she said, her voice taking on the soft, lisping tones of a child. She reached out to caress the side of his face. I’d have jumped a mile, but Dan stood strong, not even recoiling. Maybe this kind of thing went on a lot in the Lake District.
Tish paused in her praying, and I glanced over. She’d overcome her terror enough to pull out the tiny digicam she carries everywhere with her, in case she needs to turn into Paparazzi Sally. She held it up, hands shaking as she pointed at the creature in front of us.
The girl noticed, struck a pose, and laughed.
‘Oh, you naughty thing – if I’d known you were going to do that, I’d have worn my party dress!’
She flicked her finger in Tish’s direction, like she was splashing her with water. Tish screeched and threw her arm in front of her face, dropping the camera to the floor, where it smashed with far more force than it should have.
‘Don’t be mean to me,’ snapped the girl. ‘My friends won’t like it.’
The background giggling rose in volume, echoing round the room in a dizzying circle of sound. It was everywhere and nowhere; dozens of tiny voices mocking us and laughing at our fear. My eyes were darting from corner to corner, seeing nothing but an intangible swirling in the texture of the light. I could feel tiny fingers prodding into me, and didn’t know if it was real, or my imagination in overdrive.
It was so cold now I couldn’t feel my hands. My toes had gone a long time ago. I was praying – on to a Hail Mary now – and jumping up and down at the same time, trying to keep my circulation pumping. Will grabbed up a blanket off the bed, threw it round my shoulders, jogging on the spot while he starting reciting the words to ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers’ – he’d obviously run out of prayers and was using whatever he could remember.
‘We knew you’d come. You two were here a few days ago. You took so long to come back and visit – I had to play that little game with the lights just to get your attention, didn’t I? We’re glad you’re here. We get lonely. And bored. It’s not good for us to get bored.’
As she spoke the final word, the light bulb exploded, the filament sizzling and dozens of tiny glass splinters shooting out into the air. I held my hands over my head instinctively, trying to shrug into myself. She laughed delightedly, clapping her hands together.
The room was dark, apart from fingers of orange neon light spilling through the window from the street lights, casting a fluorescent glow onto the smooth s
kin of her face, reflecting from the glassy discs of her eyes.
‘Who are you?’ said Dan. ‘In the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to tell me your name.’
‘Don’t be so bossy! We’re in charge here, and we don’t like it when people tell us what to do!’ she said, pouting up at Dan. I saw him take a staggering step forwards, and guessed he’d been shoved by those same tiny hands that had been pinching and poking me for the last few minutes. It was like being attacked by a dozen ice-capped police batons.
‘And you two – shut up!’ she shouted, stamping her foot like a petulant birthday girl who got the wrong coloured cake. She turned her face in the direction of Betty and Justin, who were holding hands and still chanting. They didn’t waver; if anything, their voices grew stronger.
‘Tell me your name,’ repeated Dan, taking a step closer. She tossed her hair, like a coquettish teenager, and started to undo the buttons of her blouse.
‘Your name, demon!’ he yelled, apparently oblivious to the slutty Satanic striptease.
‘Oh? Not interested? Do you prefer boys? Little boys, maybe, like so many of your kind? Altar boys, choir boys, lost boys… or old women? Defenseless old ladies, with their puckered skin and dried up cunts? Or corpses, dead and rotting, ripe and splitting to the touch? Is that what you like to fuck, Priest?’
The harsh words were made even more foul by the fact they came with a child’s voice.
The doors to the hallway and bathroom and wardrobe were banging open and shut over and over again, in time to dozens of lisping children’s voices rising and falling as they sang Row the Boat. Merrily, merrily… . Merrily, merrily… bang. Life is just a dream. Bang.
Over in the corner of the room, the mattress was springing up and down, the foam top keeping the shape of two pairs of tiny jumping feet. In the bathroom I could hear the taps running, the sound of kids screaming and laughing as they soaked each other in a water fight. The steamed-up window behind the girl was now decorated with dozens of small palm prints from hands we couldn’t see.
‘Tell me who you are,’ insisted Dan, apparently oblivious to the twisted playground around him.
‘We can’t tell you. If you knew our names, you could call us in for tea – then we’d have to stop playing. And we don’t want to stop playing.’
Betty and Justin advanced towards her, their voices higher and louder and more insistent, the word ‘Jesu’ repeated often. Will was on to ‘Come All Ye Faithful’, which might not have been particularly seasonal, but from the furious frown on the girl-woman’s face was certainly doing the trick of bothering her.
I wrapped the blanket closer around myself as one of the unseen imps tried to tug it away. As I walked towards Dan, I could feel something trying to untie the laces on my trainers, and kicked out at thin air. Apart from being frozen, terrified and confused, I was now starting to get seriously annoyed.
I walked behind Dan, started again on the Our Father, then dragged the words of Mass to my mouth. I might not go for months at a time, but some things you never forget.
‘Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed…’
‘NO IT WILL NOT!’ screamed the girl, in a huge, booming voice that punched my eardrums. ‘Your soul will be mine forever! Your God is not interested in you, Jayne McCartney! He has abandoned you! Like He did poor little Joy! All dressed up and nowhere to go. I’m afraid I kept her awake and played games with her all night long. Until I killed her… oops!’
Betty and Justin were close; Justin edging between me and the thing in front of me; Betty passing something to Dan from her bag, all the while chanting.
The woman twisted back towards Dan, staring at the wooden crucifix he was now holding in front of his chest. Her face showed contempt. Hatred. And definitely fear. I could tell she longed to reach out and knock it away, but was too scared. Like me and wasps.
‘By the power of the cross I command you,’ he said. ‘Reveal your name.’
The bouncing on the bed stopped; the door slammed shut a final time, and I could hear dozens of young voices chorusing together. ‘Three blind mice, three blind mice, see how they run, see how they run…’
‘My name,’ the woman said, in a baby doll voice she would have had a decade earlier, ‘is Sophie Clarke. Bye bye, Sophie. Rest in peace.’
Sinuously twisting out of Dan’s grip, she was suddenly running towards the window. The window that was now open, blowing and clattering wide into the wind.
‘No!’ shouted Dan, throwing himself forwards to try and grab her. He missed, fell to the floor, and we saw Sophie Clarke, or at least her body, dive through the open window.
Will reacted first, jumping up from his knees with a huge flying rugby tackle. He managed to grab hold of her ankles, held on for grim life, his face contorted with the effort as Dan scrambled back to his feet and went to help. They had one foot each, and were pulling her back through the frame inch by inch. She was fighting them all the way, kicking and writhing, cursing their names and trying to get them to let go.
Justin moved forward, leaned out of the window and got a grip of her bucking torso, dragging her back into the room and threw her to the ground. Betty leapt behind him, slamming the window shut and kicking Sophie back down when she tried to reach it again.
She flopped on the floor like a netted fish, wriggling and jerking and crying in anger. Dan stood over her, praying loudly and insistently. Betty and Justin joined in. After a minute or so the body went limp. Soft. Lifeless.
‘Shit… is she still alive?’ I asked, crawling over to try and check her pulse. I got up close to the twisted face, looking for signs of life, and almost jumped out of my skin when her eyelids snapped back open.
‘It’s okay,’ said Dan, kneeling down beside her. ‘She’s back. It’s Sophie, isn’t it?’
She nodded. ‘What happened?’ she said. ‘Who are you?’
She sounded terrified, and stared out at us all in fear and confusion. With huge eyes. Huge, scared, very human, very blue eyes. The eyes of a young woman, who had very nearly shared the same fate as her friend Joy.
Chapter 20
I’m sure that being rich brings many benefits. You don’t waste your time worrying about the gas bill, or paying the mortgage, or debating the merits of Primark over Prada.
And, right up there at the top of the list as far as I’m concerned, you get to keep really, really nice whisky in the house.
We’d all retreated to Will Deerborne’s apartment, at his suggestion. We’d got Sophie out safely, Betty had checked on Arthur, and we needed somewhere secure to regroup.
Calling Will’s home an ‘apartment’ is a bit like calling Windsor Castle a semi. It was a vast penthouse that took over the entire top floor of the Deerborne Building. Most of it was his private living space, but there were also a few bedrooms set aside for ‘corporate VIPs’. Luckily there were no fat cats in residence that night, which meant we could all crash out, lick our wounds, and drink the rather excellent fifty-year-old Glenfiddich that Will was currently splashing into tumblers with still-shaking hands.
Sophie was wrapped in one of his bathrobes, looking like a twelve-year-old in her dad’s clothes. She was much prettier without the whole demon chic thing, but obviously still terrified. She was sitting so close to Justin she might as well have climbed onto his lap, and I noticed she never took her eyes off him, even when she was talking to us. Crikey. Takes all sorts, I suppose.
She’d explained to us how she’d found herself going back to Joy’s old room more and more often, trying to come to terms with her friend’s death. Joy had left her diary in Sophie’s room the night she died, and she’d later read it. Cue automatic guilt trip: if she hadn’t been so busy with her new man, maybe Joy would still have been alive, etc etc. She’d snuck the diary into Joy’s belongings once the police had declared it a non-crime scene. One of Alec’s little mysteries solved, at least.
‘One minute I was sitting there,’ she said, ‘fee
ling a bit sad. And the next, I woke up lying on the floor, surrounded by you guys.’
Tish was now back to business as usual – fuming about her broken camera, and planning to ‘kick some evil ass’ when she next got the chance. Yeah, right. Once she’d emerged from behind the sofa. She glared up at me, and I wondered if I’d said that out loud.
‘I’m not scared,’ she said. ‘I’m fucking angry. And anyway – you know what? Next time, I’m going to take Sister Margaret Mary with me! She’d put all those little bastards into detention!’
‘I’m sure she’d manage to stay on the back of the beast at Satan’s rodeo,’ I said, ‘but God, I hope there isn’t a next time.’
I kicked off my party shoes and curled my feet underneath me on a sofa the size of Slovakia. I really needed to sleep sometime soon, and Slovakia looked mighty welcoming.
‘There will be a next time,’ said Dan, ominously. ‘There always is. It’ll just stay, killing over and over again, and keeping the souls of those children from the rest they deserve. It won’t go away until someone forces it to.’
Oh, thank you Mr Brightside.
‘And will that “someone” be us?’ I asked, suspecting I already knew the answer to that question.
‘Unless you can suggest anybody else, then yes. It’ll be us. Or at least, me, Betty and Justin. This is what we do. This is why we’re here. You can go back to following cheating husbands any time you like, Jayne.’
Low blow. I guess we were all a bit rattled.
‘Thank you for the permission,’ I snapped. ‘Although we both know I don’t need it. Get off your high horse, Dan – I brought this to you; I’ve been on it from the beginning, and I’m seeing it through. But if I’m going to walk into that kind of situation again, I need to know more. Be better prepared. That was like… taking a nail file to a gun fight.’
Fear No Evil (Debbie Johnson) Page 14