by Adam Nevill
* * *
‘Not bad. But I seen better. You should have seen the place I done up in Ibeefa.’
Amber tried to answer Knacker as he cockily strutted about the black room and inspected the walls. His big pale eyes were wide with an eagerness she knew well; eyes lit up with an intent to undermine and wound, to criticize and torment.
She was desperate to spit her anger into his bony face. But she couldn’t speak and her legs and arms were numb. There was something jammed inside her mouth that tasted of rubber. Saliva dripped off her chin. Her head was filling with the smell of empty hot water bottles, of diving masks pulled over a dry face.
Knacker paced around her, backwards and forwards. ‘I fink I will be very happy here. Fink I’ll take this room.’ A new pair of red training shoes on his strutting feet trailed laces and paper price tags.
The room was pitch black. The walls and floor were thick with layers of oily emulsion. Light from the four candles glimmered against the paint like moonlight on the ocean at night. A smell of dried damp, dust, and the stale woody air that collects under floorboards interfered with Amber’s thoughts, made her forget things, and seemed to increase her helplessness like an anaesthetizing gas.
‘We got a deal. An agreement. You fink we’d forget about that? Was you finking we is the kind of wankers that might overlook promises you made?’
She tried to scream ‘No!’ in defiance, but her mouth was blocked. All of her strength and will was exhausted by trying to remain on the floor. Her body was so insubstantial and weak, her feet had drifted a few inches above the ground.
And there was something above her, on the ceiling, drawing her upwards with an overpowering magnetism. The urgent desire to have her up there made her struggles and her rage dissolve into despair. She was no longer sure what produced the strongest and most paralyzing bondage: the tough green string that tied her legs together at the ankle and knee, and secured her arms to her torso, or the burning frustration at being unable to cry for help.
This reaction pleased whatever it was that drew her up and up and steadily upwards, off the floor. Her consciousness was open and being rifled like a handbag stolen in a crowd. She sensed an amused satisfaction, and an intimate awareness of her feelings. It wasn’t enough that she was helpless and bound; they were all inside her head too, whispering like horrible children she had been shut inside a wardrobe with.
‘And if you is finking you is staying here, then you better start producing the readies, like. You’s got all them bills to pay off too. Council’s on my back. Gas, ’lectric, water. These fings don’t come cheap, neither. So you’s best start earning what you owe on all this, yeah?’
‘Yeah. You heard him,’ Fergal said from the doorway. ‘And you can make a start wiv our visitor. He’s quite partial to you, and you know you want it.’
The scents of Knacker’s aftershave and Fergal’s rancid clothes gave way to a smothering cloud of bad breath from behind her head. She tried to turn to see who had pressed themselves into her buttocks and was now panting over her scalp. But the little pudgy fingers inside her hair made sure she stared straight ahead. A bristly chin scraped the nape of her neck. A small, fat hand began to untuck the shirt from the waistband of her jeans.
‘And he wants to watch, like,’ Fergal said from the doorway, and grinned at what he carried in his dirty fingers.
Held by the wet hair on top of his head, Ryan’s face was offered up for her inspection. His forehead looked to have been painted red and only one of his eyes was visible; the other eye had been covered by a blue bulb of flesh the size of a potato. His lower jaw jutted out at an angle and something flopped out one side of his mouth.
Amber closed her eyes to avoid the sight of the figure drooping from Fergal’s stained paw. And silently, desperately, with what little mobility she retained, she struggled within the embrace of the stinking thing that now rubbed itself against her back. This only diverted her efforts to stay near the ground, to add substance to her growing weightlessness as she began to rise up through the darkness with the oily, fat man clinging to her body. He was breathing quickly now, nasally, almost asthmatic with excitement. He wrapped his small legs around her waist. Holding the hair on the top of her head, he yanked her head back to show her the thing that clung to the ceiling.
Amber refused to look at it, but whatever was up there slipped inside her mind.
I will come unto thee. For I have determined there to winter.
Now she was writhing on the linoleum floor of an old kitchen, amidst broken glass, wood and crockery. Mindless, she chanted at the swallowing darkness on a cold floor: ‘Their blood for my blood. You think these rats can keep you? You deserve better company.’
* * *
Amber came up from the mattress and out of the bedclothes with the duvet gripped between two clenched fists. The animal sound she made from deep inside her stomach vibrated against the bones of her face.
‘No. No. I didn’t. I never did…’ She spoke and panted at the same time, until the real world reformed around her. Her eyes opened upon her bedroom: cream carpets, Selva furniture, long linen drapes, Zenza Filisky light fittings, a walk-in wardrobe lined with the shelves she had filled with designer shoes – Zanotti, Westwood, Geiger, Choo – none of which could walk her away from this.
They had gathered inside her head: Knacker, Fergal, Bennet; she remembered that much. They had come into her head and her house and taken it over and changed it and made her a captive and a prostitute. Amber sobbed. And whatever had been slowly moving around the ceiling had directed them like puppets.
Amber clutched her face and rocked backwards and forwards and pushed at the lingering images of those faces that remained in her mind: spittle-flecked mouths, thin lips, broken noses, ferrety eyes alert to opportunity, devious reptile minds concocting their next ploys, subterfuge, disingenuous offers, entrapping demands, accusations.
She breathed deeply of the air inside her room. And she was pleased to discover that her bedroom still brandished the aromas of elegance and new luxury. The stink of the black room and its occupants had cleared. She took another deep breath to entirely rid her sinuses of the miasma from the past, powerful enough to bring her out of sleep. And her nose detected another scent, one unique to the night but instantly familiar. A fragrance to awake and pour remembrance through her; memories thick with a sadness so great her heart broke.
She was smelling Lynx deodorant and tea tree shower gel, and the jasmine fabric detergent she had used in the old washing machine when she and Ryan had lived together. And beneath those perfumes, she could smell the deep masculine scent of his shirts that had never been unpleasant; an intimate fragrance she had once happily lain in the midst of, after they had made love in the bed with the broken leg and cracked slats at their terrible flat in Stoke.
The scent of Ryan bloomed thickly about her bed, for no more than a few moments, before it vanished.
Amber clambered out from under the duvet, her nose probing the air as she chased a trace.
Not a vestige remained. Ryan had gone.
But there was someone outside her bedroom.
A body shuffled away the other side of the door, as if retreating after being caught listening to her. Muffled footsteps bumped along the first floor corridor – an uneven tread of feet, a hobble, as if the walker was lame.
Josh? She might have woken him. Maybe she had been shouting in her sleep, screaming, thrashing to break herself out of the nightmare. But why would Josh have difficulty moving?
Outside in the corridor a door closed.
Maybe the bathroom door? Josh might have risen to use the toilet and listened at her door to make sure that she was safe. He might be half asleep and uncoordinated, unsteady on his feet.
Amber needed to tell him about who had just been close to her bed. Because no one was going to persuade her right now that Ryan had not been inside this house. He had come back to her. And she needed to tell Josh about the dream that had sickened and terri
fied her awake. Amber ran to her bedroom door and unlocked it. She opened the door onto an unlit corridor.
She looked right and left, the light from her bedroom illuminating the passage: the woven carpet, cream coloured skirting boards and silver light fittings, closed doors, their antique brass handles glimmering in peripheral light. The door to Josh’s room was closed. The bathroom door was shut and the room beyond was unlit. But she had definitely heard a door closing out here. Yet there were no draughts – the house was too well insulated – and none of the windows were open. Maybe Josh had opened a window and created a slipstream of air?
To her right the footsteps continued. The sound of a descent was clear: there was someone on the staircase. She mustn’t jump to conclusions; it was probably only Josh going below for a glass of water, or planning an early start. Maybe he had come out of the bathroom and closed the door before making his way down. Knowing he was in the house gave Amber the confidence to venture through the corridor to the summit of the staircase. She slapped on the stairwell lights.
The staircase was empty.
Antique wood still shone from the recent treatment and polish, a professionally evoked shimmer that made the presence of the new clumps of dust incongruous and unwelcome. Thick clusters of hair and dust, the shape of cumulus clouds, now idled with an unpleasant suggestion of being small furred mammals. From the top of the stairs she could see each dust ball at rest on its respective step, and they issued the impression and the impact of dirty trespassing footprints in her beautiful new home.
‘Josh,’ Amber called out quietly. ‘Josh? You up?’
Silence.
Why would Josh walk through the dark? No doubt he could – he’d be good at it; trained to move without the guidance of light. Maybe he hadn’t heard her. ‘Josh?’ Amber started down the stairs. ‘Josh?’
No answer came from the unlit ground floor. But the silence down there was broken by the sound of feet; distant feet scuffing across the tiles of the kitchen, maybe no more than three careless steps. Maybe it wasn’t Josh. Ryan?
Amber went down to the hall, tiptoeing around the dust so it did not touch her naked toes. At the foot of the stairs she turned on the hallway light and moved to the kitchen. The door was open and the room beyond concealed by darkness. She paused and shivered from the cold of deep night and the contact of the chilly wood beneath her feet. ‘Josh,’ she repeated loudly.
A door closed inside the kitchen. She covered her mouth with a hand to shush her sudden intake of breath. That must have been the door that led to the adjoining garage. But there was nothing for Josh inside the garage; no reason for him to be in there.
The security lights had not come on in the garden. If a person moved near the house the garden would be plunged into relative daylight. And she would have seen the sun-bright security lights shining through the kitchen windows. So no one had broken in.
Her reason stiffened into a resolve to pursue the noise, to know who was inside her home. Because now she was angry. She would not have this; would not have strange smells and footsteps inside her home. They had no right to be here, to come inside and wake her and frighten her.
Momentarily she paused in fear that her experiences at 82 Edgehill Road had opened an aperture in her mind that would force her to perceive the hidden life in any building, especially at night, as if she were now tainted at some undetectable cerebral level. If that were true she would never find peace in any place where a life had passed, where a spirit had returned. There must be so many of them.
Breath sealed inside her lungs and ready to break into a scream, she stepped up to the threshold of the kitchen and reached inside the darkness for the light switch on the wall. Flicked it down. Solid oak cabinets, Arhaus stools, Sub-Zero & Wolf double cooker, the rolled steel hood, the integrated refrigerator, slate-tiled floors, steel spotlights. But empty of life.
Amber’s eyes found the door that led into the garage. It was closed. There should be nothing inside the garage besides her Lexus, an empty freezer cabinet she had yet to fill with supplies to get her through the coming winter. There was a new mop and bucket too, some cleaning materials with unbroken seals, unused gardening tools, nothing else.
The garage extension was the newest addition to the house and had been purpose-built. Whoever had just walked into it would not be able to get out unless they opened the garage door by using the control panel beside the metal roller door. And she would hear the motor from inside the kitchen if the automatic door was activated.
Amber inched inside the kitchen and watched the door that led into the garage. Listened.
Heard nothing.
For a while.
Until someone spoke beyond the door. People. At least two people were talking in hushed voices inside the garage. Their words were too muffled to be intelligible. But this was not Josh in her garage. This had nothing to do with Josh. And there had been no break-in. This was something else entirely.
The room bloomed with perfume: Anais Anais.
Sorry, my English not so good.
Amber twisted around on the spot, her vision in desperate search of the source of the scent. In her mind she could see Margaret’s beautiful face, the lips outlined with a pencil, the lipstick glistening, the torrent of hair sweeping over white shoulders and a backless latex dress.
You look beautiful. Stunning, like.
There was no one in the kitchen with her. So how could Margaret and Ryan be here? And such became her rage, her despair, her wishful thinking that this could not be happening all over again, here, that Amber wrenched open the door separating the kitchen from the garage.
And stared into a cold darkness. A void not penetrated by the kitchen lights. A space impossibly lightless, though not silent or still.
The garage should have been a small space, big enough for a car and freezer and not much else. But now she wondered at the size of the darkness beyond the open door.
The air was cold and the air pressure all wrong for an enclosed space; it was like coming up on the deck of a ship at night, and venturing out from the dimensions of a small cabin to see a vast sky above an ocean. One unspeckled by stars, or lit by moonlight; an eternal night that she could not see through. And into her mind came a new consideration that she might be nothing more than a speck of matter, stood inside a tiny yellow rectangle of light within an immense darkness; a lightless space so vast she feared she didn’t know which direction was up and which down. Vertigo iced her thoughts and prickled the nape of her neck, before she was overwhelmed by the feeling of being watched from inside this darkness.
An intangibility out there had managed form without shape. She suffered a notion of a growing heaviness; solidity with a slow and almost fluid length that now moved towards the light and, perhaps, extended a head forward.
The presence in the nothingness beyond the doorway made her skin shiver and her lips move without speaking. Her mind was impacted by shock, and a fear so great it felt like a concussive blow against her skull.
A thing unseen was now sliding from out of the black room. A heavy wave approached her feet as if she stood upon wet sand: a surge and then a seeping of an invisible presence that drowned her shock with confusion; a bafflement and an incomprehension of the black that now swept through her mind. And within the cold current her myriad thoughts seemed to be no more than impulses on magnetic tape, quickly rewound and seemingly erased as memories flashed and vanished in moments too short to measure …
… she was terrified by the size of a sunlit ocean … and recalled an urge to jump from the side of a ship into depths, so swirling, green, blue … alive with bubbles rising and becoming a layer of foam …
… a night sky seen from an observation deck … a canopy of darkness so vast and scattered with lighted debris … and here was her imagination extending its feeble grasp of what existed beyond the earth’s atmosphere … the inquiry dissolving before her mind was pinched out like a candle flame …
… and now here was a hospital b
ed … her sat behind a table in a white room … new clothes laid out on a hostel bed, the blouse pinned against a cardboard sheet inside plastic … ‘I don’t like these’ … ‘You’ll have to wear them because you don’t got no money’ …
… being helped up the path to a house by a policewoman in plain clothes … green plastic screens arranged around the front of the house … her bloodless face photographed through a tear …
… ‘he’s in there, on the bed. The room is pink’ …
… a cup of watery tea that looked like chicken soup … ‘they’re not even making an effort’ … her barrister shouting at a detective, her elegant hand with painted fingernails striking a laminate surface …
… the strip lights above her work station in a warehouse where she swooned with the flu …
… her dad in sunlight beside a caravan, wearing his shorts and laughing at the sight of his white legs because she was laughing at them too …
… a toy fox with a dirty muzzle she treasured as a child but had not thought about until now … a girl at school in a pink dress holding up a paintbrush, the bristles tulip-shaped with grey paste … small milk bottles in a plastic crate, the silver foil tops seeping yellow cream …
… an abandoned car seat in a field that smelled of cat piss … a paddling pool swamped with the cut grass that had collected on small feet in a garden divided by a creosoted fence … homemade sausage rolls in a Quality Street tin …
… her mother wearing a wig, her face showing the skull beneath, skin thin as rice paper, eyes distant, the eyes of a stranger …
… four people sat round a table, tears on their faces, throwing their arms into the air …
… dust on uncarpeted wood beneath an old bed … polythene stained black on the inside … bricks, soil, plaster, timber planks spotted with house paint … raised carpet that smelled of garages … rusty nails … a tree heavy with cooking apples … coils of black dust … wild flowers, jungle weeds … what looked like old newspaper in a floor cavity that soon showed itself to be a dead girl’s hand … black and white photographs of faces, smiling … Margaret’s tanned legs walking upstairs … blonde girl with a cigarette … a dog’s wet mouth … black hands … leather drum … tooth on a stair, dribbling its root … parchment eyes behind thick spectacle lenses … a pink bedspread … a tube in a masking-taped face …