An age seemed to pass before she heard a gathering sound, soft at first, a rush of air like the onset of a gale or the retreat of the sea before a vast wave crashes. She opened her eyes (or had they been open all along?) to see another figure taking shape out of the shadows. He knelt beside her and though she could not see him clearly, she knew that he was the one she had been waiting for, and that she must not look directly at his face, because he was so terribly beautiful. He parted the fabric of her shift and she felt his breath raise goosebumps on her skin. His fingers circled her breasts as he moved his mouth to each in turn, tugging lightly and then harder with sharp teeth. She was pinned under him, arching her body to him, unable to move, feeling her own arousal growing and with it an indefinable dread and excitement, the knowledge that she was about to cross a threshold and that afterwards it would be impossible to return. It was a transgression that promised enlightenment, a new understanding of herself, but she was not sure who had made her that promise, or if it could be trusted. She knew, too, in some dim recess of her mind, that these were not her thoughts, or not hers alone; they had been Ailsa’s first.
He moved his mouth down her body and pulled the shift up to her waist. She closed her eyes and clasped her hands around his head as he worked his tongue into her, drawing back, circling, expertly edging her closer; she became conscious that she was on some level holding her breath, resisting him, refusing to let herself go, for fear of what would follow. That’s it; give in, she heard a voice say, and she realised that the man in the shirtsleeves had been standing in the shadows all along, clinically observing. The understanding did not dampen her desire; instead the sense of performance emboldened her and she did as she was told, and let go.
Rising to her climax, she opened her eyes as he entered her and looked into his face, for the space of a heartbeat. Her fingers scrabbled for the cross around her throat; the cry she uttered was one of exquisite pleasure and horror in the same instant.
When she woke – for she supposed she must have been asleep – she realised first that she was freezing. She was lying on the couch in the gallery, with the electric lamps casting shadows up the wall. She looked down at herself; she was wearing her own clothes, though her jeans were unzipped and her T-shirt pulled up over her breasts. Her head felt foggy, her mouth dry and sticky; when she tried to sit up, her foot knocked an empty bottle and sent it clattering across the bare boards. She pulled her hair back and twisted it into a ponytail, troubled by an obscure sense that something terrible had happened, something she would have cause to regret, the memory of it hanging just beyond her grasp. Did she finish the bottle of wine? She had no recollection of drinking it, but it was empty, and her clothes were in disarray. She slid a finger inside her underwear, experimentally; her pubis felt tender, her skin chilled.
It was exactly the kind of situation – that nagging, cold unease – that, had she been on a date, would lead her to fear she’d been slipped a roofie. But she had been alone – hadn’t she? No one could have drugged her. She had dreamed – though the details of the dream were hazy now – of Tamhas and Ailsa; she had seen Tamhas’s experiments through Ailsa’s eyes: the concoction, the summoning, the visitation. Except that, of course, no one knew the nature of Tamhas’s experiments, not even Charles. She had witnessed nothing; her fevered imagination had conjured images out of her own preoccupations and Charles’s mythical theories. As she tried to gather her thoughts, she became aware of a noise from beyond the door; a rhythmic scratching of nails against the wood. She pressed her thumbs into her eyes, forcing herself to focus, but the sound continued, soft and insistent, until she could not stand another second –
‘Go away.’ She tried to shout, but her voice came out cracked; she was answered by a low whine, and relief sluiced through her, weakening her limbs so that she slumped back against the couch. After a deep breath, she pushed herself to her feet, righted her clothes, and opened the door to see the dog looking expectantly up at her. He made a reproachful noise.
‘God, sorry, Horace – you must be starving.’ She had no idea what time it was, nor how long he might have been sitting outside. At that thought, her sluggish brain caught up and she remembered Edward. He too might have been outside knocking while she was asleep in the gallery. She stumbled downstairs, steadying herself against the smooth wood of the banister, disorientated by drink and sleep, trying to blink away the gritty sensation under her eyelids. The grandfather clock in the entrance hall told her it was ten to eleven. She paused to listen; the house seemed caught in an uneasy silence, the ticking of the clock unnaturally loud. Outside the wind had risen again; she felt it buffeting the old walls as if seeking entry.
She paused by the telephone. Perhaps Edward had given up and left; she would not have heard a car from the gallery on the beach side of the house. She ought to call him and explain, apologise. She pressed her fingers to her temples. The dream had left her shaky, disorientated; she felt post-orgasmic, but depleted by it, rather than elated or satisfied. She could not shake the conviction that she had not been alone in the room, despite any evidence to support the idea. This uneasy mix of paranoia and guilt, the gaps in memory and the desire to convince yourself that you are being absurd; this must be what the fear of date rape feels like, she thought. The horror of being violated while unaware of it, that was it; she could not rid herself of the sensation that something had been done to her while she slept, without her knowledge, and that its effects would prove irrevocable.
Her stomach cramped with hunger and she realised she had barely eaten since the morning. She put a hand out to the wall, to feel the cold, smooth plaster solid beneath her palm. A new message light flashed on the answerphone; Edward must have called to apologise or explain. She hesitated briefly before pressing ‘Play’. The recording began with that same drawn-out silence and hiss of static; immediately she switched it off, in terror of hearing that distant, guttural voice intoning Time to go. Instead she picked up the receiver, but there was no dial tone. She clicked the button repeatedly, with increasing frenzy, but the line remained dead. Maybe the wind had brought the lines down, she thought, listening to it gusting round the corners of the house, worrying at the window frames. She would have to walk up on to the cliffs with her cell phone, see if she could get a signal. But first she and Horace needed food. One foot in front of the other; these were the practical steps she could focus on.
In the kitchen, the smell of decay had grown stronger; a sharp, cloying taint to the air that made her think of dead things. The dog seemed aware of it too; he began nosing around the skirting boards and radiators with a throaty whine as if following a scent; she found it reassuring, if only for the confirmation that the odour was not merely in her mind. She made a peanut butter sandwich and was taking the first bite when she was startled by a sound. Muffled at first, but close by, like a heavy object falling to the floor. She froze, her eyes drawn to the low door at the back of the room that led to the cellar. Someone was down there. Her bowels turned to water; her throat closed tight. She had guessed right, then; Dougie had waited for Mick’s absence to come for her – and he had cut the phone line to make sure. Her gaze was fixed on the door handle, expecting any moment to see it turn; she couldn’t make herself move. In a second or two he would be in here with her. As she thought this, an almighty crash sounded from below the house, the grating of metal hitting metal. The noise snapped her out of her trance; she saw that the cellar door had a keyhole, and an iron key hanging next to it on a hook at head height. In two strides, she had crossed the room and turned the key in the lock. Quickly she let herself out of the kitchen door on to the veranda and down the steps. She had not stopped to put on shoes and the sand was cold and damp through her socks; she scurried around the south side of the house to the cellar hatch, which she found closed but unlocked, as she had guessed. He would be on his guard now, she thought; he would know that whatever had fallen might have alerted her to his presence. But when he found he could not get into the kitchen from t
he cellar, he would have no other way out but through the hatch. She cast around on the ground to see if he had left the padlock lying around; her idea had been to lock him in and fetch help from the town, but her resolve was faltering. There was no light out here except the moon through rips in the cloud, and she could see no sign of the lock; she realised he would likely have put it in his pocket. She might have panicked then, but as she turned to hurry back inside her foot struck a solid object and she bent to find the driftwood she had carried from the shore earlier. It felt weighty and reassuring in her hands; she lifted it and practised a swing through the air. It would do, she thought. It was all she had.
So she waited in the shadows, balancing the piece of wood, testing its heft like a batter waiting at the plate, until she saw the hatch lift. She raised her weapon and steeled herself; a hooded figure climbed out in the wavering beam of a flashlight and before he could turn she brought the wood crashing down with all the force she could muster. Nerves skewed her aim, or perhaps he sensed a movement, because he twisted away as the blow fell and she caught him across the back of the head. He crumpled to the ground with a shrill cry. Zoe dropped the wood and fell to her knees in the cold sand beside the prone body; the pitch of his scream had filled her with a different kind of dread. She pulled the hood back roughly and stared into the white face beneath it.
‘Jesus Christ, Robbie. What the fuck?’
The boy didn’t answer, only kept up an insistent crying, the hiccupping sobs of a child in pain. There was blood on the back of his head. He was wearing one woollen glove, his fist balled against his mouth; the other hand was bare.
‘Shit.’ She sat back on her heels, pushed her hair out of her face and looked around, as if someone might have been watching. ‘Let’s get you inside.’
18
‘How are you feeling now?’
She had emptied the ice cube tray into a dishcloth and knotted the corners for a makeshift ice-pack, which Robbie held pressed to his head at the kitchen table, his other hand absently scratching at Horace. The dog sat between the boy’s knees, as if understanding that his warm presence was a useful consolation. She had made Robbie some hot milk with honey and crumbled a couple of painkillers in it, while she was on her second strong coffee. Now she leaned back against the sink, watching him. Her earlier wooziness had passed, to be replaced by a pounding ache in her temples.
‘It hurts behind my eyes.’
‘Is your vision blurry?’
‘Sort of. Cannae tell really.’
‘You might have a bit of concussion. I didn’t hit you that hard.’ He shot her a barbed look. ‘OK, I guess that’s not for me to say. Look, I’m sorry – I thought you were an intruder. I mean, technically you were an intruder. What were you thinking?’ When he didn’t reply, she shook her head. ‘You were lucky. Where I live, people would shoot you for breaking into their house, ask questions later.’
His face registered a flicker of alarm before he returned his attention to his mug.
‘Don’t your—’ She stopped herself in time, before she said parents. ‘Your dad – does he know you’re out?’
‘He’s in Belgium.’
‘Belgium?’
‘Or one of those. France, maybe.’
‘Since when?’
He shrugged. ‘Last week.’
‘So who looks after you when he’s away?’
‘Ma sister.’
She noted the curl of disgust as he said the word; the undisguised resentment in his voice. No love lost there. Her eyes wandered to the bruise on his face as an idea formed.
‘Does she know you sneak out at night?’
‘She wouldnae care. She’s too stoned to notice anything when she gets home.’ He picked at a splinter in the table, not meeting her eye.
‘Really? Where’s your sister getting pot, out here?’ She hoped she sounded suitably disapproving, rather than interested.
‘Off Dougie.’ He snapped his head up, stricken. ‘Dinnae tell him I said that.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’ So Dougie was dealing drugs to a sixteen-year-old; another charming attribute to add to his list. ‘Does your dad know?’
He snorted. ‘Course not. He wouldnae believe it, anyway. Dougie’s his pal.’
She nodded. They looked at one another in silence for a few moments.
‘How do you even get out here?’ she asked eventually. ‘It’s five miles from the village.’
‘I’ve got a quad bike.’
She frowned. ‘But – don’t your neighbours hear you driving it off? I’ve never heard it either.’
‘It’s ma da’s. He keeps it in a lock-up behind the boat yard. There’s nae houses out there. Then I cut off across the moors before your turning and leave it up on the cliffs.’ He pointed in the general direction. ‘You wouldnae hear it. I’m careful.’
‘So you’ve been out here a lot?’ When he didn’t reply, she pulled up a chair to the corner of the table and sat across from him. ‘Robbie – was it you all the time? Did you cut the padlock and put a new one on?’
He nodded miserably, staring into his mug.
‘And the dead gull – was that you too?’
A pause, then another nod. ‘And the mice.’
‘Mice?’
‘And the burgers.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I caught a couple of mice in ma trap. And I took some burgers out the freezer. I stuffed them behind the radiators the other night, when I did the gull.’
She stared at him, trying to comprehend. ‘Why, Robbie?’
‘I thought they’d rot and smell like dead meat but you wouldnae know where it was coming from so you might think there was a dead body under the floor and you wouldnae want to stay here.’ The words tumbled out in a rush; he wouldn’t look at her.
‘No, I mean – why? Why do you hate me so much, to play those tricks? What have I done to you?’
He lifted his head then and she saw that his eyes were filled with tears, his lip trembling.
‘I wouldnae have hurt you, honest. I was trying to save you.’
She stayed very still. ‘From what?’
‘I told you – bad stuff happens here.’ He dragged the back of his hand across his nose. ‘I thought if I could scare you enough you’d leave before they could do something really bad.’
‘Who?’ A chill crept over her skin. ‘Who do you think was going to do something to me?’
His gaze slid away; he pressed his lips together until they turned white and began scratching at the tabletop. She tried another tack.
‘Did you draw the picture in my book too?’ He nodded again. ‘So you were spying on me that day?’
‘I wasnae spying,’ he said, indignant. ‘I was on the cliff. You don’t own the cliff. I used to come out here all the time, before you ever came. To talk to Iain.’
‘Like you talk to your mom?’
He made a non-committal movement with his shoulders. Zoe watched him, unsure how to proceed. She recalled reading somewhere that murderers often returned to the scene of their crime, through fixation or guilt. This child was the only one who knew the truth about what happened to his friend in this house, last summer; in this unexpectedly intimate setting, he seemed on the point of letting it spill out. She was conscious that a clumsy or ill-judged question from her would make him clam up for good; she felt an unwelcome responsibility not to screw this up. She wished her head were clearer.
‘Did you think …’ she hesitated, weighing her words carefully, ‘that if you could stop something bad happening to me, it might make up for what happened to Iain that night?’
He was silent for a long time, picking at the wood. ‘There was nothing I could have done,’ he said in a small voice. ‘If I’d have gone after him, it would have been me as well. I wouldnae be here.’
‘But you feel guilty, because you didn’t try to save him?’
‘It should’ve been me,’ he said fiercely, after a further pause. ‘It was my i
dea to come out here at night and film in the house, see if we could prove it was haunted. Then I was the one who was too scared to go in. But it was only because—’
‘Because what?’ she prompted gently, when he fell silent.
‘You’ll take the piss.’
While You Sleep Page 28