by Prey (lit)
Cautiously, I touched the blood with my fingertip.
"Urgh," said Liz, wrinkling up her nose.
I showed her my finger. "It's not wet. It's not even blood. It's paint, that's all. Dry paint."
"But it wasn't here before," said Danny.
"No," I admitted. "It wasn't. But perhaps some kids painted it on for a joke."
Liz couldn't take her eyes away from the pre-Raphaelite woman in the painting. "Some joke," she said. "Who's this supposed to be?"
"I don't know, we only found it yesterday. It must have been covered in ivy for donkey's years."
Liz approached the mural more closely. "What an evil-looking woman," she whispered.
I glanced at her. "What makes you say that?"
"I don't know. Look at her, she's so evil! And look at that horrible ratty thing around her shoulders!"
We looked at the painting and walked in circles on the broken slates and somehow we didn't know what to do next. We had found ourselves unnervingly threatened by some kind of strange other-worldly phenomenon that was no concern of ours at all. I knew then, as I paced crack-snap-crunch around the slates, that the very best thing for us to do was pack and leave and let the estate agents take me to the small-claims court for all the money that they had already advanced me. The Tarrants had obviously realized that Fortyfoot House was haunted or cursed or that something was wrong with it. They shouldn't have asked me to renovate it without first warning me that people had disappeared here; that people had gone mad here; and that people were very likely to die here.
Sod them, I thought. I'm going.
It was then that Danny piped up, "She's there, daddy! She's there! Sweet Emmeline, she's there!"
He was standing by the Gothic window at the front of the chapel, and pointing out across the garden. I climbed noisily over the slates and stood beside him.
He was right. The little girl in the long white dress was gliding across the garden, close to the sundial, in that neatly-mown circle that Lewis Carroll had called "the wabe." "'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves, did gyre and gimble in the wabe . . ."
As she approached the house, the kitchen door swung promptly open of its own accord. It was too far away to see clearly, but as Sweet Emmeline came closer, I could have sworn that I glimpsed something dark and hairy rush from the open door, and seize her, and pull her quickly inside. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps it was nothing more than Sweet Emmeline's own shadow. But Danny stood and stared through that window aghast and I knew that he had seen more than anybody of seven ever ought to see.
"That's it," I said, turning round to Liz. "We're going. I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. But I don't know what's going on here, and I don't want to know. Do you think you can find somewhere else to stay?"
"I suppose so. I'll just have to ask around. Where are you going to go?"
"Back to Brighton, I suppose. I've got some friends who can put us up for a while. I'll give you my address."
"I thought that detective didn't want you to leave the island."
"Too bad, I'm going anyway. Do you want a lift anywhere? How long will it take you to pack?"
We left the graveyard, leaving the gate open behind us. We crossed the stream, and walked back up toward the house. The clouds were thickening, and as their shadows crossed its roof-peaks and dormer windows, the house looked almost as if it were frowning. I could feel my heart beating with stress as I approached it. It gave off such an atmosphere of malevolence that I found it difficult to think rationally about it. All I wanted to do was throw our clothes back into our suitcases, jump into the car, and put as many miles between us and Fortyfoot House as I could.
Danny hesitated, and looked down at the sea. "I liked this seaside," he said, plaintively.
I laid my hand on his shoulder. "I know. I did, too. But we're going to have to find somewhere else. I don't like all of these noises, and I don't like girls with worms in their hair."
"What happened to the ratcatcher man?" asked Danny.
"He got hurt, up in the attic. That's another reason I want to leave. I don't want you or me or Liz to get hurt."
"Can I take my crabs?" asked Danny. He had half-a-dozen little green crabs in a bucket outside the kitchen door.
"I'm sorry, no. We're going to have to stay with Mike and Yolanda. There won't be room for crabs. Why don't you take them down to the beach and have a race with them? Which one can reach the sea first?"
"Can't I take just two?"
"No, they'll mate, and then you'll have thousands of them."
"Just one, then?"
"No, it'll be lonely."
Reluctantly, Danny picked up the bucket and began to walk down to the sea with it. I preferred to have him out of the way while we packed. I'd had to do so much packing lately, it was becoming one of the regular rituals of my defeated life. Once you start packing, you never stop.
In the kitchen, Liz took hold of my hand. "Well . . . there goes our idyllic summer together," she said, with a sad smile.
"I'm sorry, yes, it does. But I can't risk Danny getting hurt, or you getting hurt, or even worse."
She looked around. "What do you think's wrong with this house?"
"I don't really know. I don't think I really want to find outnot now."
"Perhaps you ought to talk to a priest, and have it exorcized."
"I don't think that would do any good. I get the feeling this whole house was deliberately built to be what it is. Not quite here and not quite anywhere else."
Liz said, "Do you want another beer while we pack?"
I nodded.
"I could have loved you, you know," she said, ingenuously. "Another time, another place."
I gave her a wry look. "Especially another place."
We were pouring out our beer when the doorbell rang and both of us jumped. "Jesus, that frightened the life out of me!" Liz gasped.
"I don't think Brown Jenkin or Mr Stovepipe Hat would bother to ring the doorbell," I said; and went to answer it.
It was the Rentokil man from Ryde. A bullet-headed youth with a prickly crewcut and earrings, in a shiny blue nylon overall and Dr Marten's boots. "Mr Walker? Rentokil. Come about your rat."
"Oh, God, I forgot. I'm sorry. There's been a problem."
"Oh, yeah?" the youth said, unimpressed.
"The ratwell, you won't be able to do anything about it today. There's been an accident in the house. The police were here."
"Oh, yeah? Well, you know there's a call-out charge, whatever."
"All right, just send me the bill."
"You'll have to sign here, then." He came into the hallway and produced a docket to show that he had paid me a visit. He gave me a biro with a chewed cap and I signed my name.
''What was this accident, then?" he asked, tearing off the top copy of the docket and folding it up. "Something to do with your car?"
I frowned at him. "My car? No, it was nothing to do with my car."
"Oh," he said. "Just wondered, that's all, seeing it all smashed up like that."
"What do you mean, smashed up?"
"That Audi, out in the front."
I didn't know what the hell he was talking about. "Yes," I said, "that's my car. I mean, it's not in brilliant condition"
He laughed, a short staccato football-hooligan laugh. "You can say that again."
I pushed past him and stepped out through the front door. I couldn't believe what I saw. My car was dented all over, and all the windows were broken. The tires were flat, the headlights smashed in, the front bumper knocked off. Not far awayobviously waiting for me to come outstood Vera Martin, Harry Martin's widow, in a black jumper and a plain gray dress, and next to her stood a short, thick-necked young man with black greasy hair and a green tweed jacket and a large sledgehammer.
At first I was amazed that I hadn't heard him, but then I realized that it was a long way down to the chapel, and the wind was coming off the sea, carrying the sound of the surf with it, and even if I had heard anything I wouldn't have
imagined for a moment that somebody was bashing my car to bits.
I walked up to my car and picked up the front bumper. Then I dropped it again. There was no point in trying to fix it: the car was a write-off.
"What the hell did you do that for?" I demanded.
"You can call it revenge, if you like," said Vera Martin, cradling her bosom in her arms.
"Revenge? What the hell for?"
"For 'arry," said the young man, belligerently. "That's 'oo the 'ell for."
"Who's this?" I asked Vera.
"Keith Belcher, my Edie's youngest. It wasn't his idea, it was mine, but he volunteered to do it."
I walked around my car, surveying the damage. I must say that Keith Belcher had done a pretty thorough job. There wasn't a single square inch of body surface that wasn't dented. He'd even managed to bend the steering-wheel.
"Mrs MartinI didn't kill your husband. It was a terrible accident, that's all."
"There isn't any such thing as an accident, up at Fortyfoot House," Vera spat back at me. "It's a bad place for bad people, that's what. You and that rat-thing, you deserve each other. I hope you're happy together."
"Yeah, 'ope you're fuckin' 'appy together," Keith Belcher put in, smacking the haft of the sledgehammer in his open palm, as if he were daring me to take it away from him.
"Mrs Martinyou don't understand. I tried to stop him but he wouldn't take no for an answer."
"I begged you," she said, and suddenly her eyes filled with tears. "I begged you and I begged you. Don't let him go looking for that rat-thing, that's what I said. Don't let him even if he says he's got to. And now look. He's dead, all because of you, and God knows what terrible thing it was that happened to him because the hospital wouldn't even let me look at him."
I kicked one my flat tires. "Well . . ." I said. "It looks as if you've got what you came for."
"Just be thankful it was only your motor, and not your 'ead," put in Keith.
"I'm thankful, believe me."
I watched them walk away up the drive. The Rentokil youth had been standing by his van all this time, and he gave me a waggish nod of his head and a friendly grin. "Hope you know a good body-shop, mate," he said, and climbed into his van, and drove off. I felt like throwing a brick after him.
Liz came out, and stood beside me. "What are you going to do now?" she asked.
"There's nothing else I can do. Call a garage and see what if they can fix it."
"Are you still going to leave?"
"As soon as I can. But it can't be today, can it? Look at the state of this bodywork. And lookhe's even smashed all the instruments."
"Aren't you going to call the police?"
I shook my head. "She's just lost her husband. I don't want to give her any more grief than she's got already."
"But your car? What about the insurance?"
I shrugged. I didn't like to tell her that I wasn't insured. "I'll just say that I rolled it over, nobody else involved."
Liz glanced back at Fortyfoot House. "So," she said, "it looks like another night in Groaning Grange."
"You don't have to stay if you don't want to."
"Oh," she said, reflectively. "I think I'll stay. You and me have got a little bit of unfinished business, don't you think?"
I looked up at the house, too. Perhaps she was right about unfinished business, and I didn't only mean making love. Perhaps it wasn't an accident that Danny and I had come here to Fortyfoot House. Perhaps we had always been meant to.
Perhaps this was the time when Danny and I had to decide what we were, and what kind of life we were going to lead; and perhaps this was also the time when all those strange figures who appeared and disappeared within the walls and gardens of Fortyfoot House had to decide which reality they belonged to.
I said, "It might be dangerous to stay."
But she didn't seem to hear me. She turned away and stared out over the derelict stables, overgrown with morning glory; and her profile against the garden was clear and perfect, with the light curving around her slightly-parted lower lip. I felt that I was very close to her; yet very remoteas if she held all of my life and all of my secrets in her silver-plated heart.
Danny appeared in the doorway with an empty bucket. "I pulled all the crabs' legs off and threw them in the sea," he announced.
"Oh, Danny!" I complained. "That's disgusting! And it's cruel, too!"
"The fishing man told me that crabs eat anything, even when it's alive, so good riddance. The fishing man said that if you sleep on the beach too long, the crabs will start to eat your feet and your ears and all your soft bits. They always eat the soft bits first."
"Go and wash your hands for lunch," I told him.
"I thought we were going," he said, but he suddenly caught sight of the car, and his mouth dropped open and his eyes went round.
"What happened to the car?" he asked, in awe.
"It had an argument with a sledgehammer," I said, "and that's why we're staying."
8 - Nurse or Nun
When it was almost too dark for him to see, a huge man like Baloo the Bear in greasy brown overalls came round to look at my car. He stood with his hands in his pockets staring at it and sniffing, and then at last he said, "Give you thirty quid for scrap."
"I don't want thirty quid, I want it to run, that's all. It doesn't have to look like new. I don't mind the dents. But if you can fix the tires and the windows and the steering-wheel. Don't worry about the rev-counter, but I have to have a speedometer."
He shook his head from side to side as if he had water in his ear. "Not worth it, mate. Not worth the trouble. You'd be better off with a new one. It's going to cost you three hundred quid minimum, and that's just for parts."
"Oh, shit," I said.
He gave one of my flat tires a kick. "I've got a '78 Ford Cortina down at the garage you could have for three hundred. It's a bit rough, but it's taxed, and it goes."
"I don't know. I haven't got three hundred, not at the moment."
The huge man shrugged. "In that case, mate, can't help you."
He drove off in his pick-up truck with a grinding of gears and a cloud of filthy diesel. I stood for a while in the twilight, listening to the trees and the furtive flickering of bats. Then I walked back into the house where Liz was waiting for me in the kitchen. She was cooking a chicken casserole that smelled delicious; but I wasn't too sure that I was hungry. I kept listening for scratchings and scufflings, or for distant booming noises and voices that didn't sound like human voices at all. I kept frightening myself by catching sight of my white reflection in the uncurtained windows, or in the framed photographs in the hallway.
Danny was kneeling on one of the kitchen chairs drawing a picture with crayon. I leaned over him and took a look at it. It was a thin girl in a white nightgown, with thin red ribbons dangling from her hair, and lime-green cheeks. Sweet Emmeline.
" 'Come and play with us,' " Danny mimicked, in a high-pitched, girlish voice. " 'There are ever so many of us, and we can have such sport.' "
"Danny," I warned him. "Don't."
He looked up at me with eyes that were wide and unfocused and strangely glistening, almost as if he had been crying. Then, after a long silent moment, he returned to his drawing. I watched him with a feeling of helplessness, as if he had somehow gone beyond my control.
Liz, clattering the casserole dish back into the oven, said, "Well?" in a wifely tone of voice.
"Well, what?" I said.
"Well, what can he do with the car?"
"Oh, the car. Nothing for less than three hundred pounds, probably more. He said I'd be better off buying a new one."
"So what are you going to do?"
"What can I do? Keep on working here until I can afford a new one, that's all."
"I still think you should have told the police. That Burper or whatever his name was should be locked up."
"Belcher," I corrected her. I went to the fridge and took out a large bottle of cold Soave, and poured us two g
lasses. "Perhaps you're right. But that would have caused me some very slight difficulties. Such as why was the road fund license out of date, and why wasn't the car insured?"
"You weren't insured?" Liz said, incredulously.
"I couldn't afford it. Janie cleared out the building society account, everything."
"What a cow."
"Yes, what a cow. But then I probably deserved it. I didn't treat her very well."