An Inquiry Into Love and Death

by Simone St. James

  Behind me, I heard Drew come out of the spare room. The light of his torch shone over my shoulder. “There’s nothing in there. What is it?”

  “There’s something here,” I managed, my voice a rasp.

  He moved the beam over the space at the top of the stairs. I nearly flinched; I realized in a flash that I didn’t want to see whatever it was, whatever it looked like. But the light only illuminated Sultana, who flattened her ears and turned to pad back down the stairs.

  “There’s nothing,” said Drew. “It’s just the cat.”

  “No.” The cold was dispersing, my face and neck tingling as it receded. “There was something—just now. Something was there.”

  “Jillian, it’s all right. There’s nothing.”

  I was shaking. Something was in the house. I had thought myself safe in here, fool that I had been. But there was something here, inside with us.

  “I didn’t see anything in the other room,” Drew was saying. “It looks unused. Hard to tell in this light if anything’s been disturbed, but I don’t think so. I wonder where that other torch has gotten to.”

  He stopped. There came a creaking sound from outside. From the doorway to my little bedroom, I moved like a sleepwalker to the window I’d covered and pulled aside the blanket. I looked out into the garden below.

  The garden gate was creaking open, slowly and deliberately, on its own.

  “Drew,” I said, for he had followed me and watched over my shoulder out the window. “That isn’t the wind.”

  “What the hell,” he said softly.

  “Walking John,” I whispered.

  He didn’t answer. The gate finished its slow arc and stood open. It didn’t move again. The garden was still.

  “What the bloody hell,” he said again, and his voice sounded a little strangled. After a moment, he added: “The hinge could be broken.”

  “It isn’t.”

  “It could be. There could be something jamming it. I’ll just go down and check it out.”

  My throat closed. “Drew, you mustn’t!”

  “Of course I must. Look, it’s a little eerie; I admit that. It isn’t so strange that you got frightened, and the missing torch bothers me. But you can’t assume ghosts are everywhere you look, when there could be an easy explanation. I’ll check out this hinge and we’ll see—”

  The overturned flowerpot in the garden exploded as if hit with a rifle shot. The shutter over the library windows began to rattle. At the same time, there came a sharp rapping on the kitchen door.

  We stared down at the empty expanse of the garden. The tapping on the door below came again—rap, rap, rap.

  I jolted backward into Drew, who grasped my shoulders. He hesitated only the briefest instant. “All right, then,” I thought I heard him say through my panic. “All right.” He dropped his hands from me and left the room, shining the torch.

  I stumbled down the stairs after him, as the shutters continued to rattle on a windless night. The knocking had not come again, and the kitchen was still. I saw the bursting flowerpot again before my eyes, the bits of pottery showering upward, the dirt spilling onto the stones. I grabbed Drew’s arm as he headed for the kitchen door. “Please! Don’t go out there.”

  He turned to me. Again I found it hard to see his face in the dark. He may have seen mine, though, for he only said softly, “I won’t open the door—all right? Just let me try something.”

  I released my grip. He approached the kitchen door on quiet feet, leaned toward it, pressed his ear to the wood. No sound came from the other side, though from the library the shutter continued to make its unnerving noise. Drew listened for a long second; then he straightened and knocked on the door himself—rap, rap, rap.

  A long moment of silence. Then a response: Rap, rap, RAP!

  I may have screamed a little. My brain thought wildly of the words in Toby’s journal: Come out, come out. Drew stood back, his face pale.

  There was a workmanlike thump on the door, followed by a scrabbling sound that shot straight into my brain and skittered down my spine in jangling terror. The sound seemed to move across the wall toward the library window, like the clicking of a bird’s feet but deep and heavy.

  Drew and I moved in tandem. We dashed from the kitchen as one and down the hall to the library. There was a groaning sound from the window, and a high creaking; it sounded as if one of the shutters had come off its hinges. The fire was still lit in there, and Sultana was long gone, hiding somewhere, no doubt, her fur on end. She knew Walking John as well as I did.

  I reached out to one of the heavy curtains I’d closed over the window, and paused. “I don’t think I can do this.”

  “You have to,” he said.

  I sweated, and my hand shook. My arm felt like vibrating wire. All I would have to do was just lean in and open the curtain—like so—

  One of the shutters was indeed off its hinge. It dangled and banged. Past it was the empty dark garden, the opened gate, the ruined flowerpot.

  At the top of the window—the very top—a hand was pressed to the glass.

  The hand was reaching down—from God knew where—and flattened to the glass. It was grayish white, damp. The pads of its fingers were rotted black. I glimpsed blackened fingernails and a ripped, ruined thumbnail. As we watched, the hand pressed harder into the window glass—as if being used to launch the body—and disappeared. It left behind no mark.

  “Drew,” I said. “It’s climbing up the wall.”

  We heard the sounds move upward over the side of the house. Somewhere around the roof they stopped, and all was silence.

  Both of us rasped ragged breaths into the darkness. The shutter dangled. The garden was quiet. The trees beyond the garden were leafy and still. The gate did not move, and the wind did not blow. From the top of the house to the bottom, there was now absolute quiet, as if none of it had happened.

  Drew sounded as if he had just run a sprint. He stood tensed, looking at the ceiling, as if expecting to see something there. “What,” he said finally, “what the fuck was that?”

  “It’s gone up,” I said, ignoring the profanity. “Only up.” I bit my lip. “It hasn’t come down.”

  He swore again, creatively and shockingly, and I had to remember he’d been in the army. “Did it do this last night?”

  “No—not exactly.” I couldn’t help adding, “I told you.”

  He didn’t acknowledge this, but only looked down at his torch. “And how the hell did this come down the stairs? It wasn’t that thing on your roof. What was it?”

  “I don’t know.” My voice quavered. “I didn’t know there was any—anything—in here. In the house.”

  “I’m going out.” He looked at me, and with the light of both the fire and the torch I could see him now, his chiseled face like a charcoal sketch. “I have to go out there. You know that, don’t you?”

  I was shaking my head. “Please don’t. That’s what it wants.”

  “Jillian. I’m not just going to go to bed now and have sweet dreams. I’m going out there to take a look. Maybe I’ll draw that thing off the roof while I’m at it.”

  “And then what?” I cried.

  “I’ll deal with that when I come to it.” He shook his head. “A ghost. For God’s sake, a ghost. I came here because a man fell off a cliff, and now I have a bloody ghost. Why wasn’t a murder enough to deal with?”

  I followed him to the kitchen door, still pleading. “Drew, please. Please don’t.” In the extremity of my terror, it was the only thing I could manage.

  But he was unmoved. He was an RAF pilot, and when men like him saw danger they walked toward it, not away. “I’ll be right back.”

  “You won’t. Please don’t go. Please!”

  He stopped before the kitchen door. For a second I thought he was hesitating, but I knew better. He merely squared his
shoulders.

  Then, in a single movement, he turned to me, tilted my head up to his, and kissed me fiercely.

  “I’ll be right back,” he said again. Then he opened the door and went out into the night.

  Fifteen

  I watched him through the library window, past the broken shutter. He studied the smashed flowerpot and the cobbles, the light of his torch moving to and fro. Then he moved to the back gate and swiveled it, examining the hinges. He stood there for what seemed like ages, as my nails dug into my palms, but no sound came from the roof—or from anywhere.

  Come back, come back. . . .

  Drew straightened, as if hearing something; he turned in the direction of the woods, his torch down by his side. He froze for a long moment. Then, as I watched in horror, he switched off the torch, moved through the gate, and disappeared among the trees.

  I shouted, but there was no answer. I had no idea what to do. He’d told me to stay; perhaps he’d just gone a short way into the woods. Perhaps he’d be back directly, and all I had to do was wait.

  I couldn’t look through the window anymore—the memory of that sickening hand kept coming back, and I had no desire to see anything lower itself back down—so I went to the kitchen. I couldn’t make tea. I couldn’t even pace. I sat at the kitchen table, staring at nothing, and waited.

  Nothing moved in the house. Whatever had teased us with the torches had disappeared or was quiet; still, I couldn’t bear to leave the kitchen table to find a lamp and light it. And so I sat.

  After an hour, I had to admit Drew wasn’t coming back. I had a very large problem—whether to wait, or whether to go out after him. I pressed my hands to my face and rubbed my eyes with my fingertips. That thing was hunting me—it wanted something of me, just as it had wanted something of Toby. It was trying to lure me outside; it had already succeeded with Drew. To go out there could well be the last piece of foolishness I would ever perform.

  I thought of the way Drew had straightened, listening, then walked away. What better way to lure me outside than to draw Drew where I would follow? To use him as bait? It was a hunter’s trick, was it not?

  Mischievous, and a little hostile.

  Still, I stood. I wanted my coat, but there was no way I was going to feel my way through the dark to the front hall to find it. I had no time to lose, anyway. The seconds were going by. My dress and shoes would have to do.

  I closed my eyes. I would have to be quick and quiet. I would have to be aware. I would have to be clever. I opened the kitchen door.

  The night was chilled and crisp, the air clear, as if everything were etched in ink. I ran lightly across the cobbles and out the opened gate, taking the path that Drew had taken, by my nearest guess. I had no idea which direction he had gone once he left my sight, but I kept going as the trees got thicker and thicker, roughly the same way William Moorcock had taken me on our walk. I heard no sound behind me.

  After a moment, I could do nothing but stop and get my bearings, silently catching my breath. Barrow House was behind me, past the dark edge of the trees; beyond it was the steep descent to Rothewell. To my left, the woods skirting the cliff made the descent toward Blood Moon Bay—the tangled, impenetrable green I’d seen from the vantage point William had shown me. I plunged ahead.

  Far to my left, a light came as a pinpoint through the trees. It waxed, as if someone had turned up a wick or opened a lantern gate, and then it waned again.

  I stood frozen. After a moment, the light came again, steady, from the same place. So it wasn’t a lantern being carried; it was sitting somewhere, stationary. I remembered William’s words—a signal house, where John kept his lantern. He’d light it on nights when a ship was due to come in. That must be it. If Drew had seen it, he would have gone toward it.

  But he could not have seen the light all the way from the back garden. I hesitated, wondering what to do.

  From far behind me came a furtive sound. It came quietly, through the trees, and was still again. The familiar creak of my back garden gate.

  I ran. I plunged headlong through the trees, unheeding of where I was going, just trying to get away. My feet found a narrow path, and I followed it. It rose as I ran, taking me on an incline, and the sound of the crashing sea came louder.

  The trees thinned, then vanished. And I stopped.

  I was at the crest of the cliff where it thrust up from the sea. Below me, the buildings of Rothewell’s High Street were laid out like children’s toys. The water was vast and dark far below, churning.

  This was the place where my uncle had gone over the cliff.

  I took a step back. The wind stung my cheeks, pulled my hair. Toby had died here; someone had pushed him. He had gone over the edge, and down, down. . . .

  If something had lured Drew to the cliff . . . If he hadn’t been careful—

  I backed into the trees again and changed direction. This time I ran toward the light, by some unthinking instinct. The trees thickened around me again, the green world damp with the onset of an English autumn night. I could barely see my own feet, and at first I flailed clumsily, my feet slipping; then I fell into a rhythm, focused on the light through the trees, on my breathing, on not falling. I briefly thought I could have used a torch—but of course, the light would have given me dead away. I thought of Drew, deliberately turning his torch off when he went into the woods.

  Now I came to the same clearing William and I had come to in our walk, looking down the slope toward Blood Moon Bay. I couldn’t see the beach in the dark, but I could hear the heavy sound of the water, and I inhaled the salty air down my throat. The light came and went again, more clearly now, set on a promontory where it could be easily seen from the water. I had to find my way around to it without descending to the beach, and I had no bearings in the dark.

  I wasted precious minutes fighting my way through a thick patch of bush, then moving up and down, trying to see a way through. There seemed to be no path. I got caught in thorns, had to extricate myself, and made a horrible amount of noise; I paused, gasping. Behind me, a branch cracked—far away, but unmistakable.

  I bent, grasped my knees. He was coming. My mind blanked, as a mouse’s must when the shadow of an owl flies overhead. I had no ideas. I had no thoughts. I could only think to run, to hide, and I did not know where.

  In the dimness, as I began to sink into helpless panic, I spotted a path. It was cut deep into the earth, the slope crumbling and rocky, and it was going the wrong way, but I took it.

  And suddenly, as I moved, I was silent. There must be some buried instinct deep inside the human mind that understands the hunter and the hunted. Mine awoke now, and my mind and body were in perfect tandem, my feet slipping quietly over the gravelly stones of the path, stepping past roots, my legs tireless, my eyes trained on the ground. I slid through the night like a shadow.

  The path was taking me down the slope, toward Blood Moon Bay. I had no thought past that, no thought past getting away from the predator behind me. I had made it nearly halfway down the long, steep wooded slope when I heard the crumble of gravel far behind me. So he was at the head of the path, then, and following me down.

  Again, my instinct flew. I ducked off the path and jagged sideways into the trees for cover.

  This slowed my progress, but this way, he didn’t know which direction I was going, and he would have to find me in the woods. I moved softly from tree to tree, my steps light on the mossy ground. I paused at times, hidden by a particularly large trunk, listening, getting my bearings. I was not in full-out flight now. I was an animal in stealthy retreat, trying to outwit its hunter.

  And at each pause, I listened for Drew. A voice, a footstep, a shout—anything. Nothing came.

  I found I was making my way, slowly and by zigzag, down toward the water of Blood Moon Bay. The sound of the surf was unmistakable, the sea air becoming thicker. I could get my bearings there, find
another way up toward the signal house, and maybe look for a sign of Drew. My pace was slow and steady, silent and clear. There was no way anyone—anything—could track me.

  In the end, I got nearly to the bottom.

  The trees thinned, and I could now see dim light from the bright, full moon overhead. And I suddenly realized my mistake. If I moved out of my cover, I’d be exposed in the moonlight. There was nowhere else to go.

  I stopped and nearly stumbled; I grabbed a nearby branch, and it snapped. Behind me, something began to crash through the trees.

  I ran. I threw all caution and silence to the wind and ran, my feet flying, making careless sounds, the brambles scratching my legs. I screamed Drew’s name, then screamed it again. There was no answer.

  I came to the ragged edge of the trees and broke through toward the beach, heedless. The ground here was littered with broken branches and driftwood, overgrown with low weeds and vines. I wove and leaped obstacle after obstacle. “Drew!” I screamed.

  The beach opened before me, the water dark as oil, the horizon suddenly wide and undulating in the sea’s endless motion. A cold wind tore at my hair, smarted on my cheeks. I ran down the beach, toward the water. “Drew!”

  My body went cold; my jaw froze; my spine seized. I was gripped with the terror from the night before in the kitchen, the same helpless fear I had felt leaning against the door. It was electrifying terror in my arms, my legs, the palms of my hands. I whirled and looked wildly along the edge of the trees. A fallen branch flew upward as if flung or kicked by a powerful foot. There was nothing there.

  “Who are you?” I screamed into the wind.

  There was no answer, only the cold moonlight, the wind whipping my hair into my eyes, the freezing sweat on my back. I had my back to the water now, truly cornered. I looked back and forth again, back and forth, along the line of trees.

  “What do you want?” I screamed, so hard I felt a painful rasp in my throat. I was bent almost double by the effort.

  Again, it did not answer.