A Home by the Sea (A Supernatural Suspense Novel)

by Saunders, Craig

  ‘I’ve got to go, mum,’ she said.

  ‘Hold on, Irene honey. I’ve got news.’

  Just like her mum. Worried about herself. Just waiting to trump her daughter, beat her in whatever pointless competition it was that she had going on in her head.

  ‘Frank died, honey. The police called me, you know. A courtesy call, they called it...anyway, I thought you should know.’

  ‘What?’

  Suddenly cold, Irene stood. Sam gave a little grumble of dissent, but then fell quiet.

  ‘Franklin. Franklin died. There was a thing in prison...he was killed. I just...I thought you should know. It’s over, finally. Over. You can go back...’

  ‘I don’t want to,’ she said automatically, her mouth running on its own. Her words needed no thought.

  She didn’t miss any of her old friends, didn’t miss her mother.

  She missed her father and Paul, and that was about it.

  Then she remembered the note. ‘I’m coming back.’

  The day felt a little darker.

  ‘I’ve got to go, Mum,’ she said, and hung up before her mother could fuck up her day any further.

  ‘I’m coming back,’ the letter said...but who, if not Franklin?

  *

  After a shower and bathing baby Sam, who gurgled while she washed him, lightening her mood, Irene went downstairs and through to the kitchen to make her breakfast; a bowl of cereal and two muffins. Finding she was ravenous she cooked some eggs, too – scrambled, and had them on toast.

  She ate at the kitchen counter with Sam in a rocker on the counter top. She rocked him and shovelled food into her mouth. She wiped morsels of scrambled eggs and toast from the sides of her mouth with a napkin and bunched it up on the counter for her to clean up later.

  ‘Hey, baby,’ she said. ‘What shall we do today...to...’

  She looked at the napkin scrunched on the counter and remembered the letter.

  Would she recognise Franklin’s handwriting if she saw it again? Would the letter still be there, screwed up in the wet sand?

  ‘You won’t know ‘til you look,’ she said, steeling herself. She left baby Sam in the rocker, but moved him onto the floor, in case he rocked himself right off the counter. He didn’t move around much, but she didn’t want to take any chances.

  She moved out of the kitchen, still in her nightwear, and padded out to the hall. She opened her back door.

  The letter was still there, sodden.

  The words were turned up, and her eyesight was good. She didn’t need to bend down to pick it up. It was Franklin’s writing, alright. Now she was level headed in the morning light she was completely sure of it. It was good that she didn’t need to bend down to pick up the note. If she had, she might have fainted, not been able to get back up. Because the mannequin wasn’t there.

  *

  She knew where it was.

  All she had to do was follow the footsteps. The footsteps of a killer that couldn’t be, because he was dead.

  And yet she held the note in her hand, written with that murderer’s hand.

  There were sandy sloppy footprints leading up the right hand stair case, and as she followed them they continued up past the second floor, and the guest bedrooms, to the third floor, where she’d slept sound all night with her baby in her arms and someone that just couldn’t be Franklin carried on down the hall.

  To the nursery.

  Footsteps she hadn’t noticed on the way down...because they hadn’t been there, then, had they?

  ‘Fuck,’ she said, and ran in her bare feet through to the kitchen. Sam was still there, on the floor, still but hale.

  She picked him up and put him in a carrier that she fixed around her back and waist. Her stomach was still sore, and wearing Sam on her front tired her quickly, but the soreness woke her up, as did the feel of cold steel in her hand as she took up one of the cook’s knives.

  She was terrified, but she wouldn’t wilt, not in her own home. Blue House was hers, and whoever it was that was trying to frighten her wouldn’t succeed.

  The old wooden risers creaked heavily as she stalked up the stairs, holding her kitchen knife with Sam in a sling on her front. Her hands were free, yet even with the knife in her hand she felt somehow naked.

  She didn’t bother checking the front and back doors, or the windows on the first floor. She knew she hadn’t left any open. She remembered locking them for the first time the night before.

  Then how did he get in?

  Then, heart pounding, she stood at the top of the landing on the third floor. Panting, like she’d run up the stairs, willing herself to go forward. But she was putting off what she dreaded.

  And when she got to the nursery, what she feared was true, even though it couldn’t be. The mannequin was there, in the nursery, and she was sure she was in trouble, because the beautiful cherry wood was carved, as though with a heavy blade.

  Something heavy, like the police had found in Franklin’s secret room in the family house. The heavy blade he’d used to kill.

  The room stank, a fetid dark and heavy smell. It seemed to be coming from the mannequin.

  And on the mannequin was carved with a single word.

  SAM.

  *

  Marc picked up the phone on the third ring.

  ‘Marc, can you come out?’ He heard the terror in Irene’s voice, something he’d never heard before, but unmistakeable in its urgency.

  ‘Honey? What’s wrong?’ he said.

  ‘Just...’ He could hear her sobbing into the phone and his first thought was that something had happened to Sam.

  ‘The baby?’ he asked, dreading the answer.

  ‘He’s fine. Please come.’

  ‘I’m on my way,’ he said. ‘I’m on the mobile in the car, OK?’

  He put down the phone and checked around the shop, remembered to lock the till, locked the door, and drove for the coast.

  Driving as fast as he could, checking his rearview mirror every few minutes in case someone who thought they were a race car driver was coming up on him. Then screamed, because there was someone back there.

  A man sat up grinning in the back seat, and that man looked just like a cadaver, with waxen rotting skin and eyeballs that were yellow and rheumy. He could have easily been weeks dead, but for that grin. That wasn’t a dead man’s grin. That was a wicked grin that said a knife waited for you behind those tight teeth, a tongue like a blade, a loaded gun and murder with malice aforethought. He was a man who should be in the ground, but would put you there before he succumbed to death himself.

  Marc screamed ‘No, No!’ from pure fear, and glanced over his shoulder, expecting a knife at his throat...but there was no one there.

  His hands slipped on the wheel and the car careened across the road, frightening him afresh.

  He got the car back under control. Panted for a while.

  ‘Come on you bloody queen,’ he laughed, spooked.

  ‘Damn right I’m spooked,’ he told himself, because the man in the backseat of his Volvo had looked a hell of a lot like a corpse. But that couldn’t be, because there was nothing there.

  No, not nothing, he told himself.

  A smell that was recently familiar hung in the car, of death and rot and shit.

  He wound down the car window and drove faster still, afraid himself, now.

  *

  The sea was calm on the journey out, the gulls wheeling in the air, hunting for easy fish. Marc’s small boat chugged along through the shallow waves leaving a double trail of white behind the boat like the contrail of the jets he saw high in the sky when the RAF flew practise sorties over the land and sea. Imagining he was a jet, flying to his friend’s side, the distance passed quickly.

  A sense that something was in the boat with him passed quickly, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was coming. Some golem, some bogeyman, under the sea tracing his progress and following his scent, his wake.

  At the thought of a w
ake he began to think, again, of death.

  ‘Nonsense,’ he said, but then thought of Irene’s panicked voice, and the smell of death.

  For some reason he thought of the mannequin, too, and a woman who’d severed her ties to her past life, leaving no trace...but something was coming. He just didn’t know what.

  ‘Nonsense. Bullshit. Nothing to it.’

  She’s just bereaved, and that’s all there is to it.

  He nodded, convincing himself to shake away a serious case of the willies. Tried to keep as calm as the sea, but he couldn’t fool himself. He was panicking. Something terrible had happened, though he couldn’t imagine what. For Irene to sob like that...He knew she was hurting, maybe bad enough for those kind of tears...but there was something different about it, some depth of terror that he couldn’t imagine, and never would, because he’d never had children.

  *

  Marc stepped through the door into the Blue House and Irene stepped into his arms. She sobbed onto his shoulder and he looked around, even more worried now.

  It was so out of character for Irene to cry in front of anyone. She was rock, the figurehead, the planet whose gravity pulled others in. And yet she held him like a woman drowning, like a baby, needing comfort.

  Ordinarily, the house felt warm and inviting, but there was something wrong, some sense that things were out of kilter that had nothing to do with Irene’s distress. A hint of a smell, maybe just a prescience of things to come.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘You need to see it. Come upstairs.’

  ‘What is it?’ he said, holding her at arm’s length, but not letting her go. He didn’t want to let her go for fear she might crumble. This woman, who was once stone, felt like she could turn to dust any moment.

  ‘You need to see it,’ she said, pushing him back, then pointing at the footsteps on the floor.

  He frowned. ‘Someone’s been in your house.’

  She didn’t nod or give any indication that she’d heard at all, but led him up the stairs, on past the second floor and up toward the third, where her bedroom and the nursery were.

  Marc’s hand went to his throat when she led him into the nursery.

  The two cots were still in there, white bars, both made and ready, though the room felt like it wasn’t used. He could imagine Irene wanting to hold onto Sam as long as she could. It was in the way she carried him, took him with her everywhere she went, even to the point of bringing him, asleep, in the carrier, just to come up the stairs.

  The mannequin was right there, solid, beautiful. An antique for sure. Mutilated with the word SAM carved deeply into the shiny cherry that he’d polished with so much love and care.

  ‘My God...my God...’

  ‘I know,’ she said, seeming to regain some of her calm in response to Marc’s shock.

  ‘Who? How?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. She seemed to be taking strength now Marc was here, but his own response was to feel like he was falling apart. He wasn’t a brave man, but he wasn’t easily freaked out, either.

  But this was something else. Something worrying and frightening both, because someone had been in here and made this threat against his friend. His best friend, but her son, too. Though he’d never have children, now he understood why she’d been so upset, so urgent, on the phone.

  Marc took her shoulder. ‘Come on, we need to call the police.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘No. I don’t want the police involved. Not now. Not ever. And what would they do, Marc? What do they ever do?’

  ‘What? Irene...someone’s been in your house.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘And I’ll deal with it. But I’m not involving the police.’

  ‘Why not? I don’t understand.’

  ‘What will they do? What will they do about this, Marc? You know what they’ll do? Nothing. They’ll pick up the pieces when I’m dead.’

  ‘Honey, don’t talk like that. It’s got to be...I don’t know...some kind of sick joke.’

  ‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. Marc could see her stubborn nature coming back now, back through the shock, and what he saw in its place made him take a step back.

  She was bristling, and it was anger. Even though she was a small woman, her anger was immense, something that towered like storm clouds.

  ‘I want it out of here,’ she said.

  Marc nodded. ‘Of course. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. I didn’t...’

  ‘It’s not your fault, but...Marc...I don’t know who this could be. I’ve no idea. None at all.’

  ‘Franklin?’ he guessed. He and Irene had talked about Franklin and Paul, possibly more than she’d told anyone in the world, and even then only parcelled out in small chunks. There was as much Marc didn’t know as he did. But the abuse she’d suffered before Franklin killed her husband was plain to see. Even before the bastard had ruined her life, he’d broken some part of her, too.

  ‘Franklin died,’ she said in a blunt, flat voice.

  ‘He’s dead?’

  ‘He died and...I...’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m frightened, Marc, because I think if anyone could set this up, would do this...it’s him. I think maybe he got someone on the inside to come out and do this.’

  ‘Which means you’re in a lot of danger.’

  She nodded. ‘Maybe. But no police. This is my home.’

  ‘Irene...Irene...this is so dangerous. Whoever did this...they’re nuts. Fucking nuts,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to call the police. If you don’t want to, I will. This can’t...shit, honey. This can’t go on.’

  She shook her head. ‘Don’t you dare. I don’t want them involved. I just need your help. I just needed someone to know. In case...’

  ‘Don’t talk like that,’ he said. ‘It’s not...it’s a threat, but nothing’s going to happen. I’m going to stay. We’ll sort this out together. Catch them.’

  She shook her head again.

  ‘I don’t want you to stay. It’s too much to ask.’

  But it wasn’t.

  ‘I’m staying, and that’s final,’ he said, his voice strong and determined, ‘I’m going to get home, pack up some things, and I’ll be back. OK?’

  ‘No,’ she said. And the way she said it, he knew it was final.

  No matter how forceful he was, some part of him couldn’t help thinking about the smell...that dead, dark smell, and how it smelled just the same in the nursery as it did in his car, in his shop. He knew something was terribly wrong. He just didn’t know what.

  *

  Marc dumped the mannequin in the boat and headed back. The journey seemed to take longer than ever, as the boat thumped into the waves, jouncing him and the mannequin in the front.

  Every time the boat hit a wave the mannequin would make this hollow noise, thump, thump, thump.

  After a while it began to grate on his nerves. Despite the cold, he took off his jacket and padded the mannequin against the hull of the boat, so that it wouldn’t make that noise.

  It seemed such an innocuous thing. Just a dress maker’s palette, a simple thing for hanging clothes from, a tabula rasa to build upon.

  It didn’t smell. It didn’t. He hadn’t had even a hint of that stink since getting out of the Blue House. Even though he wouldn’t be able to smell anything out here but the sea, he knew it was...dormant? That wasn’t quite right, but somehow it seemed to fit.

  There was something of a threat about the mannequin, and he didn’t know why he hadn’t felt it before. Before the carving, back when it had first come into the shop.

  But then he had felt it, hadn’t he?

  The way the delivery man had just brought it back. That mouldering old thing, ugliness in among the beautiful wedding dresses...and that stink that came in with it.

  What had he been thinking? Giving it as a present to Irene? This horrible, dangerous thing.

  Dangerous. Now why would he think that about the mannequin? It wasn’t the manneq
uin that was dangerous, but whoever it was threatening Irene.

  Yes. Someone threatening Irene.

  He turned his attention away from the bust rocking in the front of the boat to the sea and his driving, weaving between the boats on the way back in to dock. The spume splashed into his hair and face, his unruly hair plastered to his head after a while. It was a lovely feeling. He loved the sea, felt at peace, and for a time, out there in the thrashing waves, he was happy and could almost forget just how wrong things felt.

  He drove back to the shop after mooring his boat, and when he got back the first thing he did was walk around to the back, lugging the heavy thing, all solid wood and iron, to the tip. He heaved it into the large green bin and wiped his hands.

  He drove home and worried all through his midday meal with David.

  ‘You know you can’t change her. She’s a stubborn one, and the only way with a stubborn one is to let them come to you. That’s how I got you, wasn’t it?’ David grinned.

  Marc sighed.

  ‘I should call the police.’

  David shook his head. ‘You can’t make her do anything she doesn’t want you to,’ he said. ‘You should know that by now.’

  Marc nodded. ‘I know. I know. But...’

  ‘But nothing, love. When she wants you, you go. Until then...until then you’re here with me...and the phone.’

  But he worried, nonetheless.

  *

  The house felt cold and empty. Like something was missing. Irene wandered the house and cursed herself for feeling so afraid. It wasn’t like her to feel fear. She’d never even been afraid of Franklin, but for some reason, now he was dead, she felt fear, true fear, for perhaps the first time in years.

  When they’d been together, before the end and the fight with Paul, she’d felt...she’d felt dead herself. She felt nothing. He’d almost destroyed her utterly. Only with hindsight and the love she’d had with Paul did she realise that. The way he’d controlled her, to the point of making it feel like her fault when he hit her. But somehow, she’d come out of the other side. That which didn’t destroy you made you stronger...that was so much bullshit. But out of the other side, you were something else. You weren’t made stronger, maybe, but if you were lucky, after you were broken you could forge yourself into something new. Paul had helped, sure, but there was also something in Irene that was tougher than Franklin, a man who’d hit on a small woman like her.