House of Fear

by Joe R. Lansdale

  I thought about the children – grandchildren, even! – in their quaint floral smocks, and nodded.

  He kissed me. “All right!” he cried, joyously, releasing the hand-brake. “Let’s go!”

  “Do you even know how to get there?”

  “You’ve got the map. Direct me.”

  My heart sank. Although I had the road atlas open in my lap, I never expected to have to use it. Michael did not understand that not everyone was like him, able to look at lines and coloured patches on a page and relate them to the real world. His sense of direction seemed magical to me. Even when the sun was out, I had no idea which way was north. On a map, it was at the top. In the world, I had to guess at right or left or straight ahead.

  “I don’t know where we are now,” I objected. “We need to stop and figure it out.”

  Fortunately, we were approaching a village, and it offered parking space in front of the church, so that was easily done. Michael had no problem identifying which of the wriggly white lines was the road we’d been on, and where we’d stopped and seen the house, and with that and the location of the village we were in, he was able to perform some sort of mental triangulation that enabled him to stab a forefinger down on a blank place within the loops of spaghetti representing the nameless country roads. “There,” he said with certainty. “It’s got to be there. An OS map would show us exactly, but anyway, it shouldn’t be hard to find. We’ll just drive around until we spot it.”

  We drove around for the next two or three hours. Round and round and round. The same route, again and again, up and down the narrow roads, some of them like tunnels, they were so deep beneath the high-banked hedges, until I was dizzy, like a leaf swept away in a stream. Deep within those dark green lanes there was nothing to see except the road ahead, the deep, loamy earth with roots bursting through on either side, and the branches of trees overhead, through which I caught pale, gleaming shards of sky. The house remained hidden from view except when Michael drove up to higher ground, and found one of the few places where it was possible to see through, or over, the thick, ancient hedgerows that shielded nearly every piece of land from the road.

  There it was, so close it must be just beyond the next curve of the road, yet forever out of our reach. The faint curl of smoke from the chimney inspired another yearning tug as I imagined sitting cosy and warm with my dear husband beside a crackling fire. I could almost smell the wood-smoke, and hot chocolate steaming in a mug.

  I was hungry, thirsty and tired of stomping my foot down on an imaginary brake every time we met another car. There was a chill in the air as afternoon began to fade towards evening, and I wondered if we’d be able to get lunch anywhere, and made the point aloud.

  He was impatient with my weakness. “We’ll get something afterwards. Surely they’ll invite us in for a cup of tea when we get there. They can’t have many visitors!”

  “If we could find that house by driving around, we would have found it already. You’ve already taken every turning, and we’ve seen every farm-yard and tumbledown shed and occupied house in the whole valley.”

  “Obviously we’ve missed one.”

  “Please, darling. It’ll be dark soon. Look, we need to try something else. Why not go to Okehampton and ask an estate agent?”

  “So now you’re assuming the house is for sale.”

  “No. I assume it was for sale some time in the past and will be again in the future, and it is their business to know the local market. It’s a beautiful place. We can’t be the first people to have asked about it.”

  “No, but we will be the ones who get it!”

  No one knew the house in the offices of the first two estate agents, and the man in the third one also stated there wasno such cottage in the valley where we claimed to have seen it – that area was all woods and fields, he said – but there was something in his manner as he tried to fob us off with pictures and details of ever more expensive houses located twenty miles away that made me think he was hiding something, so we persisted, until, finally, he suggested we go see Mr. Yeo.

  Mr. Yeo was a semi-retired property surveyor who had been in the business since before the War, and knew everything worth knowing about every house in this part of Devon. He lived still in the village where he had been born – Marystow – a name we both recognized, as it was one of the places we’d passed through a dozen times on our futile quest. So off we went to find him.

  He was an elderly man who seemed friendly, happy to welcome us in to his home, until Michael revealed what we had come about, and then, abruptly, the atmosphere changed, and he began to usher us out again. The house was not for sale, we would not be able to visit it, there was no point in further discussion.

  “But surely you can give us the name of the owners? An address to write to?”

  “There b’ain’t owners. He’s not there.”

  I thought at first ‘he’ referred to the owner, unused to the way that older inhabitants of rural Devon spoke of inanimate objects as ‘he’ rather than ‘it.’ But Mr. Yeo made his meaning clear before sending us on our way: the perfectly desirable house we’d seen, nestled in a deep green coomb, did not exist. It was an illusion. We were not the first to have seen it; there were old folk and travellers’ tales about such a house, glimpsed from a hilltop, nestled in the next valley; most often glimpsed late in the day, seemingly near enough that the viewer thought he could reach it before sunset, and rest the night there.

  But no matter how long they walked, or what direction they tried, they could never reach it.

  “Have you ever seen it?”

  Mr Yeo scowled, and would not say. “’Tis bad luck to see ’im,” he informed us. “Worse, much worse, to try to find ’im. You’m better go ’ome and forget about him. ’Tis not a good place for you’m.”

  Michael thanked the old man politely, but as we left, I could feel something simmering away in him. But it was not anger, only laughter, which exploded once we were back in our car. He thought Mr. Yeo was a ridiculous old man, and didn’t buy his story for an instant. Maybe there was some optical illusion involved – that might explain why we hadn’t been able to find the house where he’d expected it to be – but that was a real house that we’d seen, and someday we would find it.

  Yet we never did. Not even when Michael bought the largest scale Ordnance Survey map of the area, the one for walkers that included every foot-path, building and ruin, could we find evidence that it had ever existed. Unless he’d been wrong about the location, and it was really in a more distant coomb, made to look closer by some trick of air and light...

  Even after we moved to Devon – buying the wrong house – we came no closer to solving the mystery. I think Michael might have caught the occasional glimpse of it in the distance, but I never saw it again.

  I shouldn’t pretend I didn’t know what made Michael’s thoughts return to our old home in Devon, because I had been dreaming about it myself, for the same reason: the Wheaton-Bakers Ruby Anniversary Celebration. We’d both been invited – with our respective new spouses, of course – to attend it at their house in Tavistock in four weeks’ time. I didn’t know about Michael, but I had not been back to Devon in over twenty years; not since we’d sold the house. The Wheaton-Bakers were the only friends from that period of my life with whom I’d kept in touch, although we saw each other no more often than Michael and I did.

  I’d been pleased by the invitation. The party was in early October. David and I had booked a room in an inn on Dartmoor, and looked forward to a relaxing weekend away, with a couple of leg-stretching, mind-clearing rambles on Dartmoor book-ending the Saturday night festivities. And yet, although I looked forward to it, there was also a faint uneasiness in my mind attached to the idea of seeing Michael again, back in our old haunts; an uneasiness I did not so much as hint at to David because I could not explain it. It was irrational and unfair, I thought. My first marriage had not worked out, but both of us, or neither, were responsible for that, and that failure ha
d been come to terms with and was long in the past. There was no unfinished business between us.

  When the weekend of the party arrived, David was ill. It was probably only a twenty-four-hour bug (it was going around, according to our next-door neighbour, a teacher) but it meant he couldn’t consider going anywhere farther than the bathroom.

  I should have stayed home and tended to him, like a good wife – that is what I wish I had done. But he insisted I go. The Wheaton-Bakers were my friends. They would be sorry not to see me. We wouldn’t get our money back for the hotel room – that had been an internet bargain. And he didn’t need to be tended. He intended to sleep as much as possible, just lie in bed and sweat it out.

  So I went. And I did enjoy myself. It was a lovely party; the Wheaton-Bakers were just as nice as I remembered, and they introduced me to other friendly, interesting people, so I never felt lonely or out of place for a moment. Michael was there, but he’d been seated at a different table, and struck up conversations with a different set of people, so although we’d exchanged greetings, we’d hardly done more than that. It was only as I was preparing to leave that he cornered me.

  “Hey, you’re not leaving!”

  “’fraid so.”

  “But we’ve hardly spoken! You’re driving back to Bristol tonight?”

  “No, of course not.” I told him where I was staying.

  “Mm, very posh! I’m just up the road, nylon sheets and a plastic shower stall. Want to meet and have lunch somewhere tomorrow?”

  I was happy to agree. We exchanged phone numbers, and he offered to pick me up at my hotel at ten. “If that’s not too early? It’ll give us time to drive around a bit, see how much the scenery has changed, before deciding what we want to do.”

  There was a familiar glint in his eye, and I was suddenly certain he meant to take me back to look at our old house, and maybe one or two other significant sites from our marriage. I didn’t know why he felt the need to revisit the past like that – the past was over and done with, as far as I was concerned – but I didn’t say anything. If he needed to go back and see with his own eyes how much time had passed, to understand that we were no longer the people who had fallen in love with each other, then perhaps I owed him my supportive, uncomplaining companionship.

  Anyway, I thought it would be more fun than going for a walk by myself or driving straight back home.

  The next morning, I checked out, and left my car in the car park. There was no question that we’d go in his: I remembered too well that he’d always disliked being a passenger. His car was better, anyway: a silver Audi with that new-car smell inside, soft leather seats and an impressive satnav system. Something by Mozart issued softly from hidden speakers as we he headed down the A386 before leaving the moor for the sunken lanes I remembered, winding deep into a leaf-shadowed coomb.

  “Remember this?” he asked, as the car raced silently along. It was a smoother ride than in the old days.

  “I’m glad they haven’t dug up all the hedgerows,” I said. “I was afraid Devon might have changed a lot more.”

  He frowned, dissatisfied with my answer. “Didn’t you click on that link I sent you?”

  “Yes, I did. I saw our old house – didn’t I send a reply?”

  He shrugged that off. “I thought you might have explored a bit more widely. Not just the village, not just the street view, but moving up and out, looking at the satellite pictures.”

  “It’s a busy time of the year for us, with Christmas coming. I don’t have much time to play around on the internet. Although I’m sure it’s very interesting.”

  “It’s more than just ‘interesting.’ You can see things that aren’t on other maps. The aerial shots – do you remember how we had to go up to the top of the hill to see it?”

  I understood. “You’re not talking about our house.”

  “You know what I’m talking about.” He touched the screen of his navigation system and a calm, clear female voice said, “You are approaching a cross-roads. Prepare to turn right.”

  “You found it?” I asked him, amazed. “How?”

  “Turn right. Follow the road.”

  “Satellite view on Google. I zoomed in as much as I could – it wasn’t easy to get a fix on it. Street View’s no good – it’s not on a road. But it’s there, all right; maybe not in exactly the place we kept looking for it. Anyway, I have the co-ordinates now, and I’ve put them into my system here, and... it will take us there.” He grinned like a proud, clever child.

  “How, if it’s not on a road?”

  “Prepare to turn left. Turn left.”

  “It will take us as close as it can. After that we’ll walk. Those are good, sturdy boots you have on.”

  “Take the first turning to the right.”

  “Well done, Sherlock,” I said. “Just fancy if we’d had GPS back in those days – we’d have found it, and... do you think they’d have accepted our offer?”

  “Bear left. At the next crossroads, turn right.”

  Despite the smoothness of the ride, as we turned and turned again – sometimes forced to stop and back up in a pas-de-deux with another Sunday driver – I began to feel queasy, like in the old days, and then another sort of unease crept in.

  “Haven’t we been along here already? We must be going in circles,” I said.

  “And when did you develop a sense of direction?”

  “Prepare to turn right. Turn right.”

  The last turn was the sharpest, and took us off the road entirely, through an opening in a hedge so narrow that I flinched at the unpleasant noise of cut branches scraping the car, and then we were in a field.

  There was no road or path ahead of us, not even a track, just the faint indication of old ruts where at some point a tractor might have gone, and even they soon ended.

  “Make a U-turn when possible. Return to a marked road.”

  Michael stopped the car. “So that’s as far as she’ll take us. We’ll have to rely on my own internal GPS the rest of the way.”

  We got out. He changed his brown loafers for a pair of brilliant white sports shoes that looked as if they’d never been worn, took an OS map out of the glove-box, and showed me the red X he had marked on an otherwise blank spot. “And this is where we are now.”

  “Why isn’t it on the map?

  He shrugged.

  I persisted. “You must have thought about it.”

  He shrugged again and sighed. “Well, you know, there are places considered too sensitive, of military importance, something to do with national security, that you’re not allowed to take pictures or even write about. There’s an airfield in Norfolk, and a whole village on Salisbury Plain –”

  “They’re not on maps?”

  “Not on any maps. And those are just the two examples I happen to know. There must be more. Maybe this house, or the entire coomb, was used for covert ops in the war, or is owned by MI5, used as a safe house or something.”

  My skin prickled with unease. “Maybe we shouldn’t go there.”

  “Are you kidding? You’re not going to wimp out on me now!”

  “If it’s so secret that it’s against the law –”

  “Do you see any ‘No Trespassing’ signs?” He waved his arms at the empty field around us. “It’s a free country; we can walk where we like.”

  I took a deep breath, and thought about that airfield in Norfolk. I was pretty sure I knew the place he meant; it was surrounded by barbed wire fences, decorated with signs prohibiting parking and picture-taking on the grounds of national security. It was about as secret as the Post Office Tower. I nodded my agreement.

  It was a good day for walking; dry, with a fresh, invigorating breeze countering the warmth of the sun. For about fifteen minutes we just walked, not speaking, and I was feeling very relaxed when I heard him say, “There it is.”

  Just ahead of us, the land dropped away unexpectedly steeply, and we stopped and stood gazing down into a deep, narrow, wooded valley. Amid the tu
rning leaves the golden brown of the thatched roof blended in, and shadows dappled the whitewashed walls below with natural camouflage. If we hadn’t been looking for it, we might not have seen it, but now, as I stared, it seemed to gain in clarity, as if someone had turned up the resolution on a screen. I saw a wisp of smoke rise from the chimney, and caught the faint, sweet fragrance of burning wood.

  Michael was moving about in an agitated way, and it took me a few moments to realize he was searching for the best route down. “This way,” he called. “Give me your hand; it’s a bit tricky at first, but I then I think it should be easier.”

  I was suddenly nervous. “I don’t think we should. There’s someone there.”

  “So? They’ll invite us in. We’ll ask how long they’ve had the place and if they’d consider selling.”

  I saw that the notion of an MI5 safe house was far from his mind, if he had ever believed it. He wasn’t even slightly afraid, and struggled to comprehend my reason for wanting to turn back.

  “Look, if you want to wait for me here...”

  I couldn’t let him go by himself. I checked that my phone was on, and safely zipped into my pocket, and then I let him help me down to the first ledge, and the one after that. Then it got easier, although there was never anything as clear as a path, and on my own I’m certain I would have been lost, since my instinct, every time, was to go in a direction different from his. He really could hold a map in his head. At last we emerged from a surprisingly dense wood into a clearing from which we could see a windowless side wall.

  I fell back and followed him around towards the front. Pebbles rolled and crunched gently underfoot on the path to the front door. I wondered if he had a plan, and what he would say to whoever answered the door: was he really going to pretend we were interested in buying?

  Then I looked up and as I took in the full frontal view, I knew I had been here before. It was the strongest wave of déjà vu I’d ever felt, a sickening collision between two types of knowledge: I knew it was impossible, yet I remembered this visit.