The Dead Summer

by Helen Moorhouse

  The room darkened slightly as a cloud went across the sun and Martha shivered as it grew chilly, looking around her in trepidation. More than ever she wanted to leave. There was a sucking noise as Ruby drained the bottle and Martha tutted. “Right then, Rubes, you drank your bottle all up so let’s eat your porridge, eh? Please eat up and we’ll go on our adventure.” She stirred the mixture together and held up a fresh spoonful. There were no tears this time, just a point-blank refusal. Ruby turned her head to the right and leaned away from Martha. “Come on, Ruby,” said Martha, growing even more panicky and impatient. “Just one spoonful!” She held the spoon gently against Ruby’s lips but she refused to part them.

  Martha decided to try a new tack. “Are you ready for the aeroplane?” she asked and waved the spoon in the air to catch Ruby’s attention. “Are you ready . . . one . . . two . . .”

  Martha didn’t know which happened first. She thought it was the spoon – as she held it aloft ready to swoop the food down toward Ruby, it was slapped from her hand, and she saw it fly in an arc through the air and land on the floor, scattering porridge and pear where it fell. At the same time, or just before, or just after – she didn’t know – the chair that she had moved to make way for the high chair at the table slid rapidly backward across the floor.

  Martha stared in disbelief. There was no one else in the room. Her brain struggled to rationalise what she had just seen. It was for all the world as if someone had stood up rapidly and pushed the chair back as they did so. The same someone who had smacked a spoon out of her hand.

  “Oh Jesus,” she said, panic rising in her voice and tears pricking the backs of her eyes. Her eyes grew wide, searching for some explanation of what had just happened. “Oh Jesus, oh Jesus, oh Jesus,” she said as she stood up slowly and dropped the tub of food from her hand.

  She was barely aware of what she was doing. She unclipped Ruby from the highchair with fumbling fingers and grabbed the changing bag from the worktop. Her breathing was rapid as she moved and she realised that the room was absolutely freezing cold. So cold that she could see her breath in little clouds of vapour coming from her mouth.

  She felt as though she were in a dream as she flung open the kitchen door into the hallway. A fleeting thought ran across her mind that she shouldn’t, in case something she didn’t want to see was on the other side, but it was too late – the door was open. The hallway was empty. Martha dived into the study for her handbag, scrabbling to pick the leather handle from the back of the chair where she had slung it. She whimpered with panic as her fingers failed to grasp it once, twice – she had it.

  She ran out into the hallway, moving awkwardly, weighed down by Ruby and the two bags. Something made her look behind her as she ran. Still nothing there. She reached the front door. Her hands trembled as she undid the chain, turned the key in the mortise lock – she wanted to scream with frustration, felt she wasn’t moving as fast as she needed to at all – and undid the latch. With the door finally open, Martha flung herself outside as if over the finishing line of a race and out into the sunshine.

  Somehow she managed to get Ruby secured in her rear-facing car seat. She ran around the car without a look back at the house and sat into the driver’s seat, locking the doors after her. She turned the key badly in the ignition and released a squeal of panic when the engine coughed but didn’t catch. She tried again, the engine thankfully hummed into life and she set the car in gear, reversing clumsily and at speed into the hedge, scratching the boot. Her eyes were now fixed firmly on the open door of the cottage, petrified of what might emerge.

  She stared at it all the way down the drive in the rearview mirror and barely glanced left or right as she turned out onto the main road. It was only when she drove too far out into the centre of the road and had to swerve dangerously on a corner to avoid a head-on with a truck that she finally realised they were both fine, but wouldn’t be for much longer if she kept driving like that. She pulled into a farm gateway, completely off the road, and took a deep breath.

  As she sat there, she couldn’t stop herself continually checking the rearview mirror, as if whatever had knocked the food from her hand was suddenly going to appear, something shuffling down a busy country road on a Saturday morning in July. She shook her head and looked again in the mirror but this time to check Ruby’s reflection in her Kermit the Frog mirror on the headrest of the back seat. She seemed fine and was tugging at a small book attached to the handle of her car seat.

  Martha leaned her head back, gave a silent prayer of thanks that Ruby was so placid, and that she was fine. At the same time she felt despair. What on earth had she got them into? What had just happened to her at the cottage? Was she hallucinating? Was the local nonsense true and was Hawthorn Cottage – Eyrie Farm – really haunted? Martha didn’t really have an opinion on such things – ghosts, spooks, spectres – they were just something that had never crossed her frame of reference. But this – physical objects flying about the place? Spoons knocked from her hand? Chairs moving of their own accord? Martha grew pale as she began to think over her time in the house. What about all those footsteps that she first thought were floorboards creaking? Assailants getting in through locked doors . . .

  She shook her head. There had to be a logical explanation for all of this. Someone had physically dragged her down her bed after all – she had felt hands around her ankles. There must just be some other means of entry. Could something magnetic have happened to cause the spoon and the chair to move? But what about the scratching upstairs?

  “Come on, Martha!” she said aloud and hit the steering wheel with her hands. She put the car into gear and cautiously edged out onto the road. She built up speed slowly, her trembling legs making it difficult to clutch down and accelerate smoothly. She gingerly drove down the hill into Shipton Abbey and past the Abbot’s Rest and up Middle Hill, turning right into the village car park which was deserted so early on a weekend morning. It was only eight forty-five. A few moments ago she had been feeding Ruby, nervous that there was an intruder hiding in her house, planning what she would say to the police. And here she was now, in her car, unsure of what was real and what wasn’t.

  She stepped from the car, afraid her legs wouldn’t hold her. They felt like jelly, alright, but they supported her weight and she went to the boot to get the buggy. At the very least it would be something to lean on when she tried to walk with legs that felt like pipe-cleaners. She opened the boot and groaned. It wasn’t there – of course it wasn’t – she’d seen it propped up against the wall beside the front door earlier. She resignedly slung her handbag over her shoulder and took the changing bag from the back seat, hanging it across her chest. Sheunclipped Ruby from the car seat and lifted her gently on to her hip, then locked the door with her key fob. “Let’s go for a walk to clear our heads, eh, chuck?” she said to the little girl. Ruby gave a jiggle and gasped as fresh air hit her face. Martha pressed her own face against her daughter’s cheek and breathed in her sweet, innocent scent. How normal it felt to do that! Weighed down with bags and baby, she then turned and began her descent into the village.

  She was tiring already when she reached the bottom of Middle Hill. She had no real idea where she was going; she simply wanted to see other people around her, sense normality. She hadn’t walked far along the cobbled main street when she heard her name being called.

  “Martha! Ruby! Over here!”

  She searched for the voice. It was Mary Stockwell from a table outside the village café and bakery.

  “Mary!” she called gratefully. “Thank God it’s you!” As she crossed the street to the café she heard the reassuring clink of cups, the gushing of the coffee-machine inside. A warm smell of baking hung over the pavement in the summer morning air and Martha had never felt so relieved in her life.

  Mary stood up and reached to take Ruby across the burgundy canvas that separated the outdoor area of the café and the pedestrianised street. She glanced at Martha and a look of co
ncern crossed her face. “Whatever’s the matter, Martha?” she asked, and sat down with Ruby while Martha made her way to the table.

  “Oh Mary, I don’t know where to begin!” Martha stopped as she caught sight of herself in the café window, which by a trick of the light showed her reflection clearly.

  She looked white, washed-out, with huge grey circles under her puffy eyes. She noticed some spots on her chin were bloody where she had absentmindedly picked at them during the long night in the study, or perhaps in the car on the way into the village – she had no recollection of doing it. Her hair was unwashed and sticking up. “Oh my God, look at me,” she said, horrified. She hunched down in the chair and fumbled in Ruby’s changing bag for a baby wipe which she used to swipe across her eyes and then dab the bloodied spots. She then rummaged in her own handbag and to her surprise found a hair band that she used to keep her hair back when applying make-up. She was grateful it was there and slid it onto her head. It wasn’t a huge improvement but she felt that at least she’d tried. She breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Sorry, Mary,” she said, more calmly than before. “We’ve had a hell of a night.”

  “I can see that,” replied Mary, straightening Ruby’s dishevelled clothes and warming her chilly feet with her work-worn hands. She was reaching down for the changing bag to search for socks when a shadow fell across the table.

  Both women looked up, expecting to see Rosemary, the owner, ready to take their order.

  Instead, a tall man stood there with his hand outstretched. “Martha?” he asked. “Is it Martha Armstrong?”

  Mary looked at Martha, thinking that she perhaps knew him. Martha looked at the man and then back at Mary again.

  “Yes, I’m Martha Armstrong,” she said warily.

  “Great,” said the man. “I’m Will Peterson.” He withdrew his hand as Martha didn’t offer hers in return. “I was told to say I’m your present from Scotland – does that make sense?”

  Martha stared blankly up at him for a while and then remembered Sue’s postcard. What the hell was she up to? Who was this guy?

  The man continued to speak. “Your friend Sue Brice told me there was a bit of trouble at your house. She thought we might be able to help one another.”

  Twenty minutes later Martha was sitting alone with Will Peterson outside the café. She felt distinctly better than earlier, with two freshly baked croissants and two cappuccinos inside her.

  Ruby had gone home with Mary for a nap. She had grown grizzly and unsettled, clearly exhausted after her night’s adventures. Mary had watched as Martha made no effort to take her home as she normally would, saw this strange man who claimed to be a ‘gift from Scotland’ and felt vaguely uneasy. She couldn’t bear to see an unhappy child, however, so she took the baby and her changing bag and strolled the short distance to her house, on a lane parallel to the High Street.

  “She’s lovely,” said Will Peterson, gazing after the little girl and giving her a little wave. Ruby watched from the safety of Mary’s shoulder, more than ready for her nap.

  “You called her Ruby-Doo,” observed Martha. “Did you hear Sue calling her that?”

  Will looked surprised. “Not at all. It just seemed like a logical thing to call her.”

  Martha eyed him suspiciously. “Why did Sue tell you to come down here?” she asked, finally able to focus on the problem now that Mary and Ruby had gone.

  Will sat forward, a serious expression on his face. “She told you that she’s doing a feature about university courses, didn’t she?”

  Martha nodded.

  “Well, I was one of her interviewees. I’m a student of parapsychology.”

  Martha looked at him blankly.

  Will saw that she didn’t understand and shifted in his seat. “This makes some people nervous but parapsychology is about the study of things like the causes of psychic abilities and so on. And uses scientific methods to explore things like . . . life after death.”

  A chill ran through Martha. “You mean ghosts?”

  Will shrugged and nodded. “Yes, if that’s what you want to call them – among other things of course. Anyway, Sue told me about her experience at your cottage –”

  “What experience?” snapped Martha.

  Will looked sheepish. “Shit, she told me she was going to fill you in before I got here . . .”

  “She didn’t tell me anything,” said Martha coldly, then remembered a couple of missed calls from Sue the previous evening. She had meant to ring her back but had forgotten. Martha’s mind was racing. What experience? Had something happened to Sue like what had happened to her with the spoon and the chair? Surely it couldn’t have. Anyway, all of this had some sort of logical explanation. It couldn’t be ghosts, for heaven’s sake!

  “Okay,” said Will and began to explain what had happened to Sue in Ruby’s room. He started with the scratching and scrabbling that Sue had heard.

  Immediately Martha felt relief. “Oh, that happens all the time,” she said. “There’s some sort of an animal – a rat or a bird or something – nesting in the chimney-breast and they start doing their thing when everything goes quiet at night-time.” She blocked out the memory of the previous night’s horrific gasps and cries. “My landlord’s going to fix it soon. Is that why Sue sent you up here?”

  Will was listening intently. “That’s what I thought it was too,” he said. “But what interested me about Sue’s story was the fact that the noises were accompanied by an extreme and sudden drop in temperature. She said it got so cold in the room that she could see her own breath, like on a frosty day.”

  Martha’s face fell. The same thing had happened to her not an hour before. She wasn’t, however, going to tell this guy that. She just wanted to get rid of him. Who was he anyway?

  Will continued. “Sue said also that you seemed unsettled and a little unhappy here?”

  Martha snorted. “With all due respect, Will, I’m recently divorced and have had to sell my house in London and move here with my seven-month-old daughter. It’s tiring and stressful and I think anyone would be bloody unhappy sometimes under the circumstances.” Her voice had dropped to an angry whisper. She wanted this guy to just go away so she could plan what to do next, try to figure out in her head what had happened to her. Her house had been broken into, nightmare noises had come from her chimney, and, to top all that off, stuff had started moving around her kitchen by itself. The last thing she needed was to analyse all that with one of Sue’s ‘finds’.

  Will remained calm. “Oh – I understood it from Sue that you moved here voluntarily? That you saw the house on the internet and decided it was time to make a life change by moving here with Ruby?”

  His face was blank but Martha reddened at being caught out in her exaggeration. She didn’t know why she’d told the story as if she’d been forced to move here. Damn Sue for having blabbed her life story to some random stranger.

  “Look,” said Will, placing his hands on the table, “I hope you don’t think that I’m taking a liberty when I say that you look a little anxious and tired. Your friend – who took Ruby – she seemed very concerned about you. Also, looking at it logically, you‘re wandering around on a Saturday morning with two bags and a baby in your arms and no pushchair for her. Maybe I’m putting two and two together and making five but you look like someone who left your house in a hurry this morning?”

  Martha looked at him across the table. Who the hell did this guy think he was? Had he been following her? Was he her intruder? She felt rage bubble up inside her. “Teach you that in parapsychology school, then, do they?” she hissed. “A special class in Jumping to Conclusions? Along with a course on Reading Into Things That Aren’t There? That’s what you people specialise in, isn’t it? Pretending to find things that aren’t there and scaring the life out of folk?” Her hands were beginning to tremble again, a combination of rage and caffeine.

  Will turned and gathered his jacket off the seat behind him. “
I’m really genuinely sorry to have bothered you, Martha. As it happens, my remit in researching stuff like this is usually to disprove and debunk what’s presented to me as so-called paranormal evidence, if that’s what you want to call it. It’s my job to be a sceptic, to prove that things that aren’t there, as you put it, actually aren’t there at all. I can see I’ve upset you, landing on you out of the blue like this, and I’m really sorry. I’ll leave you to it.”

  He stood to go but paused as Martha spoke.

  “I think I had an intruder last night,” she said quietly.

  Will sat down, looked at her with kind eyes. “You think you had?”

  “I know I had,” Martha corrected herself. This heebie-jeebie talk of ghosts was obviously rattling her brain. “I know that Sue has meant the best in asking you to come down here,” she continued, “but I was physically held down by someone. It couldn’t have been supernatural or whatever you call it.”

  Will nodded. “Look, why don’t we have another coffee?” he said gently. “At the very least you can tell me all about it – you look like you need to get it off your chest.”

  Martha paused for a moment. Suddenly the temptation was strong to pour the story of the night’s events out to this complete stranger. She had to talk about what had happened to someone – make some sense of it by hashing it out with another human. And it didn’t feel right talking to Mary for some reason. The villagers here were very good at making Martha feel like an outsider, like they knew something that she didn’t, and she wanted to think things out a little longer. Obviously, there was something about this guy that Sue trusted and, after all, she trusted Sue completely. Another half an hour in the sunshine wouldn’t do her any harm and then this stranger could just go back to Edinburgh and Martha could go to the police like she’d planned and then . . . Maybe it was time to think about going back to the city?