Haunted Shadows 1: Sickness Behind Young Eyes

by Jack Lewis

  “You the fella who rang earlier?” she said.

  Jeremiah nodded.

  “I’ll take you to Clive.”

  She led us away from reception and down a corridor that smelled of bleach. The roof was low and at points it looked like Jeremiah was going to bang his head. It was like it had been designed for short people. Maybe the family who once owned didn’t have any members over six feet tall. We stopped outside a door with the number thirteen on it.

  “This is Clive’s room. Try not to rile him up. He doesn’t look it, but he’s a vicious bugger.”

  I looked at her in surprise. I thought we had come to see a weak old man, but she made it sound like Clive was prisoner. I expected her to reach to her side and pull out a truncheon and pepper spray.

  She gave two sharp knocks. A thin strip of light shone under the door, and footsteps walked toward us. The door knob rattled and twisted, but the door didn’t open. It started to turn quicker, and I heard groans from behind it. The handle shook furiously, as if in fright.

  “Slide the bolt, Clive,” said the receptionist in a pleasant, but patronising, tone of voice.

  A bolt clicked and the handle turned, and this time the door opened. We were greeted by a face that looked like a corpse emerging from a coffin. Clive looked ancient. His skin was wrinkled so that there was not an inch of smoothness, and it seemed dried out. His wrists were bony, and a white night gown clung onto his torso.

  “Clive, we have two people here to see you.”

  Clive stood uneasily at the door, as if wondering whether to let us in. Finally he took a step to the side. He smiled at me, and despite looking like death his smile was warm, and his eyes shone behind it. It struck me that I felt at ease in his presence.

  “What a surprise,” he said. “Come in, come in.”

  I had expected his voice to be dry and croaky, but his tones flowed like warm treacle. He walked into his room and sat on the edge of his bed. I stood in the doorway, unsure of what to do.

  “Come on love,” said Clive, and waved his hand in the air to beckon me in.

  “I’ll leave you to it,” said the receptionist. “Remember; don’t get him into a state. There’s a panic alarm next to the bed if you need anything.”

  Jeremiah and I walked into Clive’s room. I shut the door behind me. Despite the gloom of the manor, he had made bright use of his space. There were flowers on the mantelpiece, and a bookcase filled with adventure books was opposite his bed. Paintings hung on the walls.

  Clive crossed his legs. “First time I have ever heard her call it a panic alarm,” he said. “They normally call it the care button. Makes me sound like a murderer.”

  We took seats next to Clive’s bed. Jeremiah sank into his like he was lounging in a gentleman’s club. I sat upright. The wooden spine of the chair dug into my back.

  “I can’t tell you how good it is to see you again,” said Clive.

  I shot a look at Jeremiah, but he didn’t betray any surprise. I wondered if the two of them had met before. Then I realised that Clive had addressed the words to me. I didn’t know what to say.

  “It’s been too long,” he carried on. “When do I get to see my beautiful grandson again? He’s not asleep in the car is he?”

  “I don’t know what – “

  Jeremiah gave me a sharp kick on the ankle. I saw his eyebrows arch as if trying to tell me something. I looked at Clive and thought about where we were. It slid into place.

  “You know I always love to see you,” said Clive, “but we’ll have to be quick. I have a class to teach in thirty minutes.”

  Suddenly the room seemed cast in shadow. I looked at the old man perched on the end of his bed. It made me sad to think about what happened to our minds as we got older. That thoughts could start to get jumbled up, that memories could seep through into reality and confuse us as to what was real. Clive had once been a teacher, I realised, and his past was swimming into the present. He must have a daughter, too.

  “We won’t take too much of your time, Clive. I know you’re busy, and you can’t keep the school waiting, eh?” said Jeremiah.

  His tone was kind. It seemed like some people were exempt from his bluster.

  “I’ve always got time for my daughter and her – “

  Clive looked at me, as if searching for the word.

  “Assistant,” I filled in. “This is Jeremiah, my assistant.”

  I decide that there was nothing to be gained from correcting Clive. If he thought I was his daughter, then so be it. It was obvious that his real daughter never bothered to come and see him. I felt Jeremiah’s gaze burn on me, but I let my lips wrap into a smile.

  “I’m so proud of you,” said Clive. “A high-flier. City slicker. Not like your old dad.”

  Jeremiah straightened in his chair.

  “I wanted to ask you about a pupil of yours.”

  Clive’s eyebrows arched. “Oh? Not that bloody Thomas, is it?”

  “No,” said Jeremiah. “Emily Jenkins.”

  Clive ran his hand over his head as if expecting curls to topple between his fingers, but his hair was sparse. He pulled his fingers away and seemed confused for a moment.

  “I don’t recall her," he said.

  “Little girl, black hair. Quiet. Moody,” said Jeremiah.

  Clive’s face was one of utter confusion. Whether it was through fading memories of the years or the advancement of his condition, it was clear that he struggled with the name. He needed something to prompt him. I didn’t want to speak of it, but I knew what would spark a fire of memory in him. I thought about the diary.

  “You made her sit next to a boy called Thomas," I said. “He stole all her pens. Her name was Emily Jenkins.”

  Clive’s face drained of colour until he turned as grey as the sky outside. His eyes grew wide, and he shrank back so far it seemed like he was going to flop on the bed. He shifted away from us, as if putting distance between himself and the name.

  His face twisted into a mask of terror. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words formed. Instead a cry crawled out of his throat, as if it was the only sound he could manage. I bolted out of my seat. It looked like he was going to pass out.

  He moved even further along the bed until he bumped his head against the back wall. He was like a child scampering away from a monster. The groan trailed away, and he stared at us blankly. Then, not daring to take his eyes off us, he reached his hand out toward the panic alarm.

  Jeremiah stood up, walked to the end of the bed and pulled it away from him.

  “Just a few questions,” he said.

  17

  Jeremiah had never scared me until now. There was something chilling about the way he snatched the panic button away from Clive. He was calm, but there was a look in his eyes that suggested Clive should do as he say. The old man shrank back against the headboard of the bed.

  “Nurse!” he shouted.

  “Maybe we better go,” I said.

  Jeremiah shot me a dirty look. “I’m sick of this place. I’ve had it with their cover-ups and bullshit.”

  “Are you saying he’s faking his condition?”

  “They fake everything else around here, so why not?” He leaned into Clive’s face. “Tell us about Emily.”

  White eyes stared back. “Don’t say that name. I don’t know who you mean.”

  Jeremiah’s shoulders shook. “Tell us.”

  “Nurse!”

  Footsteps ran along the corridors toward our room. The door opened and the receptionist stood there, eyes wide as if she didn’t know what to expect. I wondered why a nurse hadn’t come. Did this woman have to play nurse to the fifty-odd residents as well as receptionist?

  “What the hell is going on here?”

  “I want to see his medical records,” said Jeremiah.

  The woman arched her eyebrow. “Are you his doctor?” Her tone was sarcastic.

  “Does he really have Alzheimer’s? Has he actually been diagnosed?”

  Cli
ve looked up at Jeremiah from the bed. He winced when he heard the word. Sadness stabbed through my chest when I realised we were talking about Clive like he couldn’t hear us. It seemed like because he had his condition, we assumed that he didn’t matter and that he couldn’t process our words. The fact was that he was probably cleverer than all of us.

  “We better go,” I told Jeremiah.

  Jeremiah pointed at Clive. “Tell us about the girl.”

  The receptionist held a walkie-talkie in her hand. “I can have security here in five minutes.”

  Jeremiah hung his head. He walked toward the door, shoulders sagging like a tire bleeding out air. As he passed me he looked at me with sad eyes.

  “This is a lost cause, Ella. It’s all a big waste of time.”

  There was hurt in his tone, as though the misdirection and lies of the villagers were a weight pressing down on him. I understood how much this all meant to him; that investigating this stuff was his life, and he wanted to find mysteries that he could scientifically prove and then show them to the world.

  There was something real to this one. I knew that from the way goosebumps raised on my skin when I thought of going back to my room. Knowing that was the case meant that I could never talk about it, because talking about what I saw would mean acknowledging her existence. Then those horrible knocks would come, not just on my door but on Jeremiah’s too.

  We walked out of Clive’s room and down the gloomy corridor, our footsteps sinking into the decades-old carpet. The receptionist walked briskly ahead, so fast she almost slipped into a run. It was like she didn’t like venturing too far into the building, that it was safer behind her reception desk where she could see the front door.

  As we got into the lobby I gave Jeremiah a dig in the ribs. When he turned his head toward me I gave him a knowing look.

  ”Listen,” I said, looking at the receptionist. “I’m Clive’s daughter, you know.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. Surely you’ve seen me here before?”

  “I only started a few months ago. Never seen you here.”

  I hung my head. “Yeah. I don’t come as often as I could. Think I could go see him again? Just me on my own?”

  The receptionist put her fingers to her chin. The remains of flecked-away polish clung onto her nails.

  “Aye, go ahead.”

  When I pushed open Clive’s door and walked into his room, his shoulders twitched in alarm. He stared behind me into the corridor, but after seeing it was just me his posture relaxed.

  I looked around his room. Aside from the bookcase there was little to show how he accounted for his time. Did he just lie in bed and stare at the walls? For his sake I hoped not, because they weren’t a nice sight.

  Familiar watercolour paintings hung over the seventies-style wallpaper. I walked up to the wall and stood in front of one of them. It was of the woodlands outside of town, and it was by the same artist as the ones I had seen before. My throat tightened as I stared at the scene.

  The trees bunched together to create pillars of darkness and sucked away any light that dared shine at them. Outside the woods four children played. The boys seemed to be wrestling with each other, while the girls drew symbols on the grass in chalk. Beyond them, deep in the heart of the woodlands, were four figures. They were too far into the shadows to see clearly, but their black outlines were there all the same. They watched the children, and seemed to be waiting for them to venture into the woods.

  “I see these everywhere,” I said. “Guy must be famous.”

  Clive laughed. “Trust me, he’s not famous. I’d venture to say that most people bought his paintings out of pity.”

  “They’re so dark and depressing.”

  “He was that kind of man.”

  I turned and looked at him. He looked much more at ease with just me in the room. “It was you, wasn’t it?” I asked.

  Clive nodded slowly.

  I pulled out a chair opposite him. “Mind if I sit?”

  “Park your bum.”

  The wind swept along the fields outside and blew the grass to one side like a comb running through hair. The clouds were wispy in some places and thick in others, struggling to decide whether to give the village another lashing of rain. There was a chill to the air, and it was the kind of weather that drove people indoors where they’d light up their fires and shiver into their clothes.

  “I’m sorry about Jeremiah,” I said.

  “He’s a thug.”

  “He’s just passionate.”

  Clive looked to the walls at one of his paintings. His eyelids were heavy like a basset hound, and glumness settled over him.

  “Haven’t painted in years. Can’t seem to do it, any more. As soon as I get an idea it slips away.”

  “Why do you paint the forest so much?”

  He let out a shaky breath. “Because I used to think about them a lot. It was like I didn’t have any choice. My thoughts were drawn to them, and also to…”

  “To her?”

  As soon as I spoke the words they shattered over the stillness of the room like crystal smashing on a marble floor. Clive wrapped his fingers round one side of the headboard. He looked to the door, as if wondering whether to try and call for reception again.

  “I know about it all,” I said. “I know about her.”

  The fingers of his free hand twitched. He took hold of the bedcover and pulled it over his knees. His forehead creased as thoughts tumbled over in his mind. Finally he shook his head, as if he had made a decision that he was unhappy with but knew he must stick to at the same time.

  “She was such a sweet child,” he said. His words sounded choked and desperate. “She had a nice nature. The kind who would remember my birthday. That sort of awareness is rare in small children. They’re usually selfish little bastards.”

  He shot a look at the hallway as if he expected someone to be stood there. “She was the cleverest girl in my class by a mile, and there was talk of fast-tracking her into another year group. She was clever way beyond her years, beyond any child I had ever taught. But there was a sadness about her, too.”

  I swallowed. It seemed wrong to hear about her, like any words concerning Emily should stay unspoken. “What kind of sadness?” I asked.

  Clive’s face was pale. “There was a sickness in those young eyes.”

  He put his hands to his face. He curled his fingers and pressed them into his skin, and for one ridiculous second I thought he was going to start clawing at his own face to tear it off. Instead a deep sob rumbled from his chest and out of his mouth.

  I stood up and walked over to him. I put my arms over his shoulder and brought his head tight against my stomach. I let the old man sob against me, his shoulders heaving and shaking as the sadness welled in him.

  Finally he brought his hand away from his face. The sadness slipped away, as though within a second it was forgotten about.

  “Thanks for coming,” he said. “Can you bring Alfie next time?”

  “Alife?”

  He looked at me with a raised eyebrow. “My beautiful grandson.”

  “Oh, yeah. Sure thing.”

  I knew that there was no more I would get from Clive. He had taught Emily, and he knew that something was wrong with her. Aside from that, there was nothing he could have done. From the painting he made it seem like something in the village haunted him, that a spectre rested on his shoulders. Maybe his condition was the best thing for him. It sounded horrible, but maybe the ability to forget was a blessing.

  I stood in the doorway and watched him as he stared out of the window. There was something about the words he used that jarred in my thoughts. I couldn’t place it, but I knew there was something significant about what he had said.

  “I’ll see you around,” I said. “It was good to see you.”

  “And you dear.”

  I turned and faced the dark corridor. I was about to leave when I heard him rustle on the bed behind me.

  “Ella?”<
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  I span round and faced him.

  “Yeah?” I said.

  Hang on. He just called me by my real name.

  Clive sat up straight, as if unseen hands pulled at a string on his back. “She knows about you.”

  A chill spread through my legs, into my stomach and chest and up my arms until it felt like pins and needles stabbed at every inch of my skin. I pulled my coat closer and walked toward the main lobby as shadows swallowed up the corridor behind me.