White Silence

by Jodi Taylor

  I don’t know why, but I suddenly remembered the tale of The Monkey’s Paw and of the broken thing dragging itself home.

  My hands were shaking as I reached out for the curtains. On three. One, two … I pulled back the curtain.

  Ted’s face was pressed right up against the window. Level with mine. Familiar brown eyes looked into mine. His hands scrabbled feebly at the window.

  I screamed and fell backwards, nearly tripping over the coffee table. There were four steps up from the pavement to the front door. He must be more than six feet off the ground. How? How could he do that?

  His lips moved and at the same time the phone began to ring, each ring louder than the last until the shrill sound hurt my ears.

  I wrenched the curtains closed with such violence that the pole nearly came down and with that came anger. I would not be terrified in my own home like this. I found the telephone wire, traced it back and ripped the jack out of the wall.

  There was a moment’s silence – just long enough for me to sigh with relief – and then the phone started up again. Ear-splittingly loud.

  Bewildered, I stared, at the jack, still disconnected from the wall. I could hear the extension ringing upstairs as well. In a fit of fear-inspired temper, I knocked the handset to the floor. The receiver fell off the cradle and lay some distance away.

  ‘Let me in. Let me in.’

  The voice came from the receiver. And from the voicemail recorder. And from the receiver upstairs still lying on its cradle. All perfectly synchronised.

  ‘Let me in. Let me in. Let me in.’

  And now it was coming from the TV as well. And from my laptop lying switched off and unopened on the table. And the little radio in the kitchen.

  ‘You are about to die. You are about to die. You are about to die.’

  The words were all around me. No longer weak and distant, as if coming from a long way off. Now they were loud. Demanding. Urgent. Surrounding me with a cacophony of sound. Ted’s voice rose to a roar.

  ‘LET. ME. IN.’

  And then there was silence. A very long, very loud, white silence.

  In the backyard, the outside light flicked on.

  And then off again.

  And then on again.

  And then on and off rapidly, wildly – as if something was repeatedly passing in front of the sensor. Back and forth. Back and forth. He was at the back of the house. Looking for a way in.

  I caught a movement in the corner of my eye. Slowly, terrified of what I might see, I dragged my eyes from the back door and turned my head. The wall that divided my house from Colonel Barton’s was slowly bulging inwards as if under massive pressure. As if something hideously huge or hideously strong was seeking to push its way through from the other side. An intolerable pressure was building. I felt my ears pop. My jaw ached.

  And then the wall exploded.

  Thousands and thousands of tiny pieces of wall flew apart in front of my eyes. Like an exploding kaleidoscope. The force knocked me backwards. I sprawled on the floor, winded, staring up at the ceiling and thinking, get up, get up. You must get up. You’ll die if you don’t get up.

  I rolled over, expecting to have to fight my way out from underneath rubble and bricks, and through clouds of choking dust, but there was none of that. Struggling to my feet, I found myself staring at an empty black space where my wall had been. I should have been peering through into Colonel and Mrs Barton’s memory-filled sitting room but it wasn’t there. Just a thick, black hole where the wall had once been - the entrance to a very long and very dark tunnel and I remembered, when Ted had been dying, the cold empty void in which I’d found myself. From this black tunnel, an icy blast howled. A chill wind cut me to the bone, yet didn’t stir a single hair on my head or even move the curtains.

  And still Ted’s never-ending voice boomed on and on. From the TV, from the telephone, from all around me, rattling the windows and hurting my ears. ‘You are about to die you are about to die you are about to die …’

  Something was coming. I could feel it coming. There was something hiding in the darkness. Something was drawing closer with terrifying speed. Oh my God, it was Ted – he was here and he was coming for me.

  I struggled to my feet. My first thought was to get to the front door, wrench it open and escape out into the snow, but to where? Where could I possibly go? Who or what could protect me? All I would be doing was dragging the danger with me. I was suddenly conscious of how very alone I was. There was no one in this world to help me. No one could help me. No one could protect me from whatever was coming for me. There was no point in running. I had nowhere to run to. I had to stand and face it and I had to do it here, in my home. Where I was strongest.

  I took a few steps backwards and set my back against the door to the stairs, feeling it behind me, solid and strong. My head was full of the old rhyme –

  By the pricking of my thumbs

  Something evil this way comes.

  Because something evil was definitely coming. I could feel it in the way my skin was crawling and the world was darkening around me. In the same way that once, all those years ago, I’d sensed the beige woman with the black spikes and known to keep my distance from her, here again was something that meant me harm.

  I was shivering with cold and shock. And fear. Tears ran down my cheeks. Why me? I’d never wanted any of this. Why was this happening to me?

  Never for one moment taking my eyes from the black nothingness in front of me, I felt behind me for the door handle. I couldn’t find it and I didn’t dare look around, not even for one second, because something in the blackness was moving. Something was growing larger with every second. Something was moving faster than humanly possible, crossing immeasurable distances in no time at all. Something blurred in front of my eyes and then, with heart-stopping suddenness, Ted was here.

  Except … he wasn’t. The shock stopped my breathing. It wasn’t Ted.

  I saw a woman, about my own age, slender, taller than me, barefoot and dressed in modern clothes – rumpled jeans and a dirty T-shirt. There was a bloodstained wound over her heart. Her bare arms were badly bruised, especially around the wrists, as if she’d been bound. She’d been beaten, too. One eye was nearly closed and her nose was crusty with blood and snot. A small trail of blood ran sideways from the ugly black hole in the centre of her forehead, as if she had already been lying on the ground when she was shot through the head. An ugly thought. I heard Jones’s voice. ‘One to the heart and one to the head.’ What I could see of her hair was soft and curly except where it was matted with black blood. Most of the back of her head was missing and what remained was just a misshapen hole of grey matter and shards of white bone.

  Her face was – or had been – human. It was her mouth that terrified me. Her mouth was wrong. Her mouth belonged to something else. It hung, huge and loose. Her lower jaw didn’t seem to be attached to anything and swung as she moved her head. The movement made me feel sick and even as I looked her mouth fell open and dropped right down onto her chest.

  I heard Michael Jones’s voice. ‘She had to write her confession in the end. They’d broken her jaw.’

  I thought I’d been afraid when Evelyn Cross climbed onto my bed in the dark. I thought I’d been afraid when Thomas Rookwood took my sight and I’d been right – that had been fear. What I felt now was terror. Sheer, paralysing terror. Terror that took away my thoughts and froze my limbs. I could barely even breathe. Because this time – it was personal. I knew who this was. This was Clare. Or more accurately, this had been Clare once upon a time. And I knew what she wanted. She wanted me. I wasn’t sure why she wanted me, but I could hazard a guess. Jealousy. Revenge. The hatred of the living by the dead. The resentment of someone who stood to have what she now never could.

  Her lips drew back from jagged, broken teeth and she uttered a long, liquid snarl that went straight to my hind brain. In the same way that I had known, years ago, that the beige spiky woman had meant me harm, I knew now that
what was standing here in front of me meant my utter destruction.

  I would have screamed. I know I opened my mouth to scream for help. From anyone or anywhere, but no sound came out. I strained and strained, hurting my throat. No sound emerged. Not even a faint whimper. It was like the very worst nightmare come true. I couldn’t scream, couldn’t move, couldn’t do a thing to save myself.

  The noise was tremendous. From all over the house, Ted’s voice was still shouting for me to let him in. The icy wind still shrieked. Why could no one hear what was happening? An entire wall of my house had disappeared. All around Castle Close, people were eating their evening meals or watching their TVs. Why did no one come to help me?

  The answer came unbidden. I had to help myself.

  And the thing I thought safely buried inside me, awoke from its long sleep, uncoiled itself and said, ‘Fight.’

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I think there comes a place beyond terror. When things are so bad that human emotions simply aren’t strong enough to express them. When a person travels through terror and comes out the other side. We hear the phrase – she laughed in the face of danger – and suddenly that made complete sense to me. Not that I was in any danger of laughing, but suddenly I found myself in that place beyond terror and my mind became an oasis of calm and quiet. I could think.

  First there had been poor burned Evelyn Cross but she had only ever wanted to help others. And then there had been Margaret Croft. She had only wanted her son. Now there was Clare and she wanted me. The thought sprang into my mind. What would Jones do?

  Well, that was easy. I could hear him saying it now. ‘Stop screaming, Cage, and start scrapping. If you must go down, then at least let her know she’s been in a fight.’

  Good advice. I straightened up and we faced each other across my sitting room. Deep inside, I felt again that slow stirring of anger. This was my house. My home. This was supposed to be the place in which I was safe. Enough was enough.

  Without any clear idea of what I was doing, I put out my hands, palms outwards in a gesture of denial and said. ‘Go back.’

  There was no authority in my voice. She sneered at me. I was going to have to do much better than that.

  I couldn’t understand why she hadn’t reached out for me. My house was small. She was no more than five steps away, standing where my wall had been. She could just reach out for me and … I had a sudden vision of being stuffed, headfirst into that enormous mouth. The room swam around me. Desperately I took deep breaths. I couldn’t afford to faint. She would be on me in a second. Despite all my best efforts, I swayed. Again, I heard that long, liquid snarl. The one that turned my blood to ice.

  The one that made me wake up.

  I found I was leaning back against the door – the only thing holding me up at the moment – and nothing had happened. For a few seconds, I was sure I’d been out of it. Not unconscious, but definitely not with it. And yet nothing had happened. I blinked my eyes open and looked at her.

  She hadn’t moved. She still stood as I’d first seen her. Why hadn’t she seized me? I’d been in no position to defend myself. She could have ended things there and then. Was she toying with me? Or …

  She stood on the threshold, thick blackness behind her and with every light in the room shining in her face. Was it possible … could it be that she didn’t like the light? I remembered my instinct to switch on every light in the house. No, surely not. That was far too easy. The forces of darkness held back by the power of light. That couldn’t be it. I was convinced it would take more than a few light bulbs from IKEA to hold back this particular force of darkness, but wherever she’d come from, whatever vast distances she had crossed to get here, suppose she couldn’t actually step into this world. I’d been fainting, virtually helpless, and she’d failed to take advantage of that. She could just be mocking me, of course, taunting me with the idea that I wasn’t completely helpless, but suppose I was right. All I had to do was stay here and there was nothing she could do. Because she couldn’t reach me.

  I straightened up, thrust my hands forward again, mustered all the conviction I could find, and shouted, ‘Go back. Go back to where you came from’

  As I spoke, all noise ceased. The wind died away. The phone, the TV, everything fell silent.

  Long moments passed. Nothing moved. There was no sound at all and the silence was far more frightening than what had gone before. I suddenly thought, now it really begins.

  She drew in a breath. A long slow inhalation that went on and on. She wasn’t breathing – she was sucking. I felt an enormous pressure dragging at my chest, sucking the breath from me, pulling me towards her. She was holding out her arms in a welcoming gesture, inviting me into a cruel embrace. An embrace that would lead to my death. Or worse. The destruction of my very soul. The urge to take a step towards her overcame my fears. Unbelievably and without any effort on my part, my right leg lifted.

  No! The thought slammed into my brain. No. I wouldn’t have that. I remembered again my overwhelming fear when Thomas Rookwood had taken my sight from me. That dreadful feeling of helplessness and panic. That would not happen again. I was me. This body belonged to me. I would not have this.

  I dragged my foot back again and at the same time, my groping hand finally found the door handle. It felt reassuringly cold and solid under my hand. Something to hang on to. And my escape route. If she couldn’t get to me then all I had to do was keep my distance. To run away. I had no idea where to, but anywhere away from Clare seemed a good idea.

  The handle wouldn’t turn.

  The door wasn’t locked. There was no lock on this door. The handle just wouldn’t turn. Still without taking my eyes from her, I tried turning it the other way. This was an old house. Sometimes things didn’t work quite the way they should.

  The handle still wouldn’t turn.

  I felt the pressure dragging at me.

  Pulling me away from the door.

  Instinctively – without thinking about it, I put up my hands again, palms outwards to keep her off and said as forcefully as I could, ‘No.’

  The pressure eased, fractionally. She seemed puzzled for a moment. And then angry. Her prey was not as helpless as she had supposed.

  She snarled again. A long deep note that ran right up my spine and made the hair on my neck rise and once again the thing inside my head hissed and said, ‘Fight.’

  I did. I summoned all my strength and pushed hard. For a moment – just for a moment – she rocked back on her heels but before I could do anything, she regained her balance and redoubled her strength. Inch by inch I was pulled away from the door. I tried to resist. I tried so hard, but just I wasn’t strong enough to push her away. My head ached with the effort. Whatever was giving her strength – hate, rage, jealousy, the desire to hurt as she had been hurt – she was far too powerful for me.

  She was stealing my breath. The very air that I breathed. My chest was heaving with the struggle to drag in enough oxygen. My vision blurred. My heart fluttered like a panicked bird. I couldn’t breathe in. I couldn’t breathe out. My whole chest felt as if my ribs were in an enormous vice.

  Like a giant snake, her blue tongue flickered in and out. Tasting my fear. Savouring it. Nothing I could do could hurt her. I had no way of fighting back. All I could do was fight her every inch of the way and struggle to delay the inevitable.

  She was pulling me towards her all the time. My body was leaning at an impossible angle. I could only keep my balance by taking a step forwards. Then another, and another, and each tiny step took me that bit closer to my death. I fought to breathe. I kept telling myself not to panic. Just breathe slowly. Take in a little air. Let it out gently. I dared not take my eyes off her. She pulled. I pushed as hard as I could, but it wasn’t enough. It just wasn’t enough. She was inexorable. She would reach out, gather me in and consume me. This thing – Clare – would eat my very soul. The pace was quickening. She was winning. I couldn’t hold her. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn�
�t see. I was fighting for my life and I was losing. I was growing weaker by the moment.

  And then, as if I wasn’t doing badly enough, I made a fatal mistake. Not daring to take my eyes off her even for an instant, my foot caught in the rug. I stumbled and fell forwards onto my knees. Almost within touching distance.

  Her shriek of triumph froze my blood. Her arms reached out for me. I tried to scrabble backwards but the pressure was bursting my chest. I tried to push her away, but there was nothing to catch hold of. She was as insubstantial as cold, greasy fog.

  I was on the floor. I was helpless. She loomed over me. I remember the smell of her. Once, when I was out walking, I had come across the body of a dog. It had been dead for some time and writhing with maggots. The smell made my stomach heave. This was the same. The stench of rotting dog.

  I tried to roll away, but none of my limbs would function. I couldn’t move.

  Her body was lowering itself over mine, her arms held out in some ghastly parody of a fond embrace.

  Her mouth grew and grew until it was wider than my head and I knew she would eat me. Now there were no teeth, no tongue, just an unending blackness. A nothingness. My world was filled with a great dark void that would swallow me whole and it was getting closer every second. I would be lost. Lost for ever. No one would ever know what had become of me. I could smell her rotting dog breath. Feel my heart fail.

  Her mouth grew wider and wider. Impossible, obscenely wide. Like a snake about to devour its enormous prey, she would devour me.

  I tried to hold her back but she was far too strong for me. She had always been too strong. Everything was too strong for me. I realised now how unprepared I was for the world in which I’d found myself since Ted’s death. I had something that was possibly a gift, but more probably a curse and I’d tried to ignore it. I’d buried it. I’d run from it and that had been wrong. My dad had been wrong. I should have worked at it, honed it, learned to use it – if only to defend myself. Perhaps I should have let Sorensen have his way. If I’d placed myself under his protection and worked with him, would I be here today?