The Dead Summer

by Helen Moorhouse

  Then Martha was out of conservatory, racing through the kitchen, along the hallway and up the stairs. Heart hammering, she threw open her bedroom door.

  All was still. Ruby’s little nightlight cast stars and moons around the walls, rotating slowly and silently. And Ruby lay peacefully in her cot, soother in mouth, one hand thrown above her head clutching the stubby tail of her teddy bear, Hugo.

  Back downstairs, Sue was standing in the kitchen, waiting nervously.

  “She’s fine,” said Martha shakily, her heart still pounding with the fright. “But I wish I could say the same for me.”

  “Jesus H, Martha,” said Sue, “but your kid sure makes some funny noises in her sleep!” She gave a half-hearted laugh as she spoke, stepping back into the conservatory.

  Martha was grateful for a rational explanation, and began to laugh herself. Yes, that was it. Just Ruby making one of her sleep noises. After all, when she was newborn, she used to emit bloodcurdling squeals and Martha would fly to her side but all would be fine, the tiny girl sound asleep. Just like now. That’s what it had been for sure. Just Ruby making a noise combined with the unfamiliar acoustics of a new house.

  Sue sat back down on the couch, pretending that her knees wouldn’t support her and fanning herself. “Phew! That frightened the wits out of me! At this rate my nerves will be shattered from my ‘peaceful’ weekend in the country.”

  She laughed again and Martha joined her, laughing a little too loudly but the sound making her feel better.

  “Speaking of nerves . . .” Sue went on, and launched into a rant about country drivers in a transparent bid to change the mood.

  Nevertheless, both women jumped when there was a grizzling cry from the monitor some time later.

  “I’ll just go take another peek, shall I?” offered Sue. “Just to make sure she hasn’t turned into a werewolf or anything since you came back down?”

  “Okay,” said Martha hesitantly. “Thanks, Sue.”

  Sue stood and left the room, crossing the kitchen in darkness and going out into the hallway.

  Martha heard the wooden boards of the stairs creak and the floorboards yield underfoot across the house. She looked again at the monitor, crackling now as it picked up Sue’s footsteps. She was glad her friend had offered to go and check this time because she had started to tremble again and wasn’t actually sure if her legs would have carried her up the stairs. She felt sober and cold. She stood and pulled the door of the conservatory shut, bringing her own reflection round to face her, and that of the open doorway to the kitchen behind her. She instantly regretted doing it, suddenly filled with an irrational fear that she would see someone, or something, behind her when the door closed. The door clicked into place, the reflection remaining thankfully empty but for her own image. Martha turned the key in the lock and then, for security’s sake, went and hung the key on its designated hook inside the kitchen door.

  Martha heard Sue flush the toilet upstairs and took a deep breath. She went back into the conservatory and sat back down. She smoothed her skirt and took a mouthful of wine to calm her nerves. That strange noise . . .

  It was just Ruby, she thought. She does make funny noises in her sleep sometimes. It’s the only possible explanation. You’re going to do this. Six months, show everyone you can manage, make a new start.

  Her pep talk made her feel slightly better, as did the return of Sue who was smiling.

  “All shipshape upstairs,” said Sue breezily. “The Mistress of the Night has her soother in her gob and that teddy bear over her eyes and we’re a werewolf-free zone.”

  Martha smiled, now reassured, and drew her feet up underneath her as Sue plonked herself back down on the couch and began a rant about the misuse of roundabouts.

  Martha glanced at the monitor and back at her reflection in the conservatory glass. All fine, she thought, pushing aside the tiny voice raised by her fright which asked her over and over what the hell she was doing here.

  Chapter 4

  May 31st

  The next day dawned sunny and warm again. A trip to the village of Shipton Abbey for an excellent lunch at the Abbot’s Rest and a stroll around the historic ruined abbey before returning home did much to dispel both Martha and Sue’s hangovers along with the memory of their fright from the night before. The more Martha thought about the noise from the monitor, the more she reasoned that of course it had just been Ruby – but the amount that she and Sue had to drink had made it seem infinitely worse than it was, and what had scared her was, in fact, alcohol-induced.

  In the light of day, it made her feel ashamed that they had drunk so much wine with her baby in the house and she made a mental note to cut down. After Sue had gone home, of course, she thought, as the two enjoyed a local cider in the garden of Hawthorn Cottage later that afternoon while Ruby tried her best to sit up on her playmat in the shade. Martha leaned back in her chair and let the sun warm her face. She could already feel the glow of a mild sunburn on her arms for staying out too long but she didn’t care. This, she thought, was bliss.

  They retired early that night, exhausted by fresh air and scrumpy. Sue knew she had to get a good night’s sleep in order to drive home safely the following day, and Martha knew that she couldn’t face another late night and early morning with Ruby who had woken at six with the sunshine streaming into Martha’s room through the light curtains. The sooner Ruby could go into her own room with the blackout blinds the better.

  Sue didn’t really like how dark the blackout blinds made Ruby’s room. She had stubbed her toe rather badly getting out of bed to go to the loo the previous night and she disliked the way that when she turned the light out the darkness actually seemed thick over her face, like you could touch it. She had lived in the city for all of her adult life and was used to the orange glow of street-lights at night-time.

  The noises of the countryside were something she couldn’t get a handle on either. “I thought it was supposed to be deafeningly quiet,” she had complained to Martha earlier. “It’s just bloody deafening and I can’t tell what any of the noises actually are! It’s all crunching and crackling and rustling and squeaking! And then last night there was a noise like a baby screaming!”

  Martha laughed but had to suppress a shiver at the words. “It was a fox,” she said, trying to sound reassuring.

  Sue gave her a sideways glance. “Whatever it was, it was blue, bloody murder! And then that dawn chorus! People get mugged by gangs on my street and it’s still quieter! And what’s with it happening at four in the morning?”

  Sue knew that she would find it hard to get off to sleep with the blackout blinds down, but it was preferable to a four o’clock start with the birds and the first approach of light. She switched off the main light in the room and felt her way back to the bed in the thick darkness, feeling almost stifled by the blackness that surrounded her. When she lay down and looked upward it was so black that she began to wonder if her eyes were actually open or closed.

  A moth suddenly began to beat its wings against the window where it had become trapped by the blind. Sue sighed, but tried to ignore it and turned over onto her stomach to sleep. She finally managed to block out the moth but that noise was almost immediately replaced by another.

  Sue lifted her head to listen. At first she couldn’t place where the noise was coming from, being completely disoriented by the darkness. Straining her ears, however, she reckoned that the source of the sound was the blocked-up fireplace in the wall along her left-hand side. It was a scratching noise, starting slowly but becoming faster from time to time. She listened as it changed in frequency from a gentle scrape to a frantic scrabble. Bloody rats, she thought, and turned over in bed. She had stayed in the country with relatives when she was a child and remembered that during her stay a rat had become trapped in the walls of the old house. For days they had all listened to it run through the old walls from room to room, scrabbling to find a way out. It had eventually fallen silent and the so
und was replaced a few days later by an unpleasant smell coming from the wall outside the parents’ bedroom. She couldn’t remember it being removed – the novelty of the rat in the wall had worn off when things fell silent – but she recalled the freshly plastered patch of wall on the landing.

  The scrabbling continued, growing more and more frantic but not moving from the patch of wall where the chimney-breast was. Sue made a mental note to remind Martha to get her landlord back, with a rat-catcher, as soon as possible. Still the scratching continued. Sue lay there in the darkness, becoming increasingly restless. She rolled onto her side, pressed one ear into the pillow and jammed a hand over the other. Eventually she rolled onto her back. The moth had again begun to beat its tattoo on the window and the scratching from the fireplace had reached fever pitch.

  Sue sat up in bed, bright red with heat and frustration. “Shut up!” she whispered as loudly as she could, not wanting to wake Martha and Ruby across the landing. She clapped her hands sharply together as if trying to scare a bird away. It worked – on the scratching at least. The scrabbling stopped immediately, even though the moth continued its incessant flapping.

  Sue listened for a while. When the scratching noise didn’t start again, she lowered herself back down on the bed. “One out of two ain’t bad,” she whispered to herself. She could sleep through the moth with a fist in her ear.

  When she woke again, the room was bright but Sue knew that there was something wrong – that the brightness couldn’t be daylight as the blackout blind was firmly drawn. The memory of the moth from earlier in the night crossed her mind and she realised that it was silent, finally. In fact the whole place was silent. Sue wondered if this was what had woken her.

  She came to fully, noticing that what was illuminating the room was in fact the overhead light that she was sure she had switched off before getting into bed. She remembered back to earlier in the night, feeling stifled by the darkness. She remembered clapping her hands at the noise in the wall in complete darkness and drifting off to sleep.

  She rolled onto her back, registering the bulb lit up above her head. Had Martha turned her light on and looked in on her? And then forgotten to turn it off again? That didn’t make sense.

  Then Sue realised something else. When she breathed, for some reason she could see her breath in puffs coming out of her nostrils.

  She blew air out through her nose again, another puff of steam. She opened her mouth and exhaled deeply. A cloud of vapour formed and then dissipated in the same way as it would on a February morning when the ground was thick with frost.

  Sue realised that the entire room was freezing and that, not the silence, was what had woken her.

  She pulled the duvet up toward her chin and turned on her side, drawing her legs up into a foetal position. A thought struck her and she craned her head around to see the small thermometer that Martha kept on the bedside table to ensure Ruby didn’t overheat. She blinked, couldn’t believe what she saw. Minus 2º Celsius. As cold as a January night, but it was almost June. During a heat wave that had lasted almost two weeks. London had hit 30º that day, for heaven’s sake. And the temperature at 5 p.m. on the sign outside the village pharmacy had read 26º.

  Sue sat upright. The cold enveloped her immediately, sliding around her back which was exposed in her sleeveless pyjamas. More clouds of vapour came from her as her breathing grew faster and shallower and she looked around the room in the glare of the overhead light. She could see that she was alone but for some reason it didn’t feel that way. Her gaze was drawn again and again to the doorway but the old-fashioned wooden door with the latch remained firmly shut. No one was there. No one was anywhere in the room. But Sue was sure of two things. She didn’t feel alone. And it was minus 2º Celsius.

  Sue didn’t scare easily. She had worked as a journalist since leaving university and it had made her hard and logical when she needed to be. There had to be a reason for this feeling she had, but she couldn’t think of one. Usually unflappable and imperturbable, she realised now she was scared.

  She scanned the room again. “This cannot be fucking happening,” she said and half-pushed herself from the bed to get up and get out of the room.

  All of a sudden she began to feel heat flooding the room – no, that wasn’t right. It wasn’t heat coming into the room, it was the coldness leaving the room, and leaving through the door where her attention had been drawn. She swivelled her head back around to the thermometer as the goose-bumps began to die down on her back and arms. For the second time that night she couldn’t believe what she saw. The thermometer showed the temperature changing, rising up and up at speed – 6 degrees, 7 degrees, 8 – the numbers were changing almost too quickly for the device and they would stall from time to time and then jump up the 3 or 4 degrees it had missed while stopped. It eventually settled on 19º Celsius – about right for the extremely warm night and the time of year.

  Sue sat stock still on the bed, trying to figure out what had just happened to her, and what to do next. She didn’t want to stay in the room – her arms and legs were trembling with shock and fright. What scared her more than staying, however, was the thought of heading toward that doorway. The doorway through which the cold had been sucked out.

  She felt weak in the aftermath of the experience. She sank back onto the bed, numb, and there she remained, staring at the still-lit ceiling, trying to figure out what to do until she fell into a fitful sleep.

  Chapter 5

  June 1st

  It was nearly ten when Sue eventually appeared in Martha’s kitchen. She had slept through after the strange experience in her room, but still she felt exhausted and couldn’t banish the thought of what had happened from her mind. Her concern now was how to tell Martha when she couldn’t explain it herself.

  Martha was sitting in the conservatory – gazing into space, a cup of coffee clasped in her hand – while Ruby was napping upstairs in her bed.

  “Morning,” said Sue, almost sheepishly, realising as she saw the tiny frame of her friend that in her terror the night before she hadn’t even thought to check if Martha was alright, or worse still to check on tiny Ruby. She eased herself down on the wicker armchair, her body feeling all over as if she were getting flu. “Sleep alright?”

  Martha looked up in surprise, only registering Sue’s arrival in the room at that moment. “Oh, hi,” she said, giving a half-hearted smile.

  Sue felt sure that her friend was exhausted and distant because she had experienced the same strange occurrence as she had.

  “Like a log, actually,” Martha went on, “but you look like shit!”

  Sue looked closely at Martha. She didn’t want to bring up what had happened bluntly if Martha hadn’t had the same experience and, looking at her now, she realised her eyes were red-rimmed from crying, not necessarily from lack of sleep. She decided to bide her time in mentioning it. There was plenty of time left in the day to get a case packed and get Martha back to London. Sue was sure of one thing, and that was that she was uncomfortable with her being alone in this house with Ruby.

  “Think I’m coming down with something,” said Sue. “But what’s up with you? You don’t exactly look full of the joys of spring?”

  Martha lowered her eyes and when she raised them again Sue saw that they were filled with tears. “Oh just ignore me, Sue,” she said, rolling her eyes upward as if trying to reabsorb the tears that welled in their corners. “I’m just feeling a bit, well, sad, I suppose.”

  Sue leaned over and grasped Martha’s hand. “Why are you sad?” she asked gently, knowing that Martha would need prompting to talk, partially hoping that she would announce how stupid it had been to move to this place.

  Martha sniffed. “I’m sad that you’re going home today. I’m sad – really sad, that Ruby’s got to start crèche tomorrow – I mean, someone else is going to get to see all the things that she does and they’re not going to appreciate it one per cent as much as I do. I’m sad I’m not marr
ied any more. I’m sad that I’m here instead of cooking a fry-up in my kitchen at home – I’m sad those daisies over there need watering – like I said, just ignore me. I’ve got the collywobbles, that’s all.”

  Sue saw an opening and took it. “Then come back to London with me,” she said, squeezing Martha’s hand.

  Martha looked completely taken aback. “What?” she asked incredulously.

  “You can stay with me,” continued Sue. “Till you sort something out for you and Ruby. Something new and modern – with no dead daisies and dodgy plastering. We can see each other all the time, like before – what do you say? Just pack a case for you and Rubes and we can come get the rest of the stuff next weekend.”

  Martha looked stunned. “But you were all for this yesterday! All full of how great this place was and how you were so proud of me for taking things in hand and putting Dan behind me – why the hell are you trying to get me to back out now, Sue?”

  Sue thought carefully. She thought about saying ‘because your spare room has something weird in it and I don’t want to leave you alone’ but then thought better of scaring Martha, just in case her plan didn’t work. She’d save that until everything else failed. “Because . . . I don’t think . . . this place is right for you . . .”

  Martha gave her a long look, then released her hand and walked into the kitchen.

  Sue heard the kettle go on and the sounds of Martha spooning coffee into mugs and then adding the milk and stirring before pouring in the hot water. There was silence for a while and then Martha carried the two mugs back to the conservatory and placed one in front of Sue before sitting down with her own in her hands.

  She spoke eventually. “Sue, there is absolutely nothing I would like more than to come back to London with you,” she said, slow and measured.

  Sue’s heart leaped but then fell again as Martha added her ‘but’.