The kettle suddenly boiled, at the same time as the easel in the dining room collapsed. Chiding herself for being so jumpy she went through to the sitting room, from where the cigar smell seemed to be emanating.
Adam had assigned the whole of the previous evening to a loving examination of the box. Declaring it to be mahogany, he had announced that the heavy lid was a sign of its careful construction. The lid closed tightly, which somehow he knew was important. There was a hygrometer in the inside of the lid, which he lectured her was there to monitor the humidity level. Unvarnished inside, it had trays at various levels, which he knew was ‘to store different size cigars separately, and to rotate them within the box.’ When she asked how he knew so much about something that he had never seen an example of before he became quite angry, belligerent even. They had one of their familiar aggressive arguments, and Lauren flounced off to bed.
Now the smell of a burning cigar was prominent in the room. There was no sign of smoke, just the aroma. She searched around the room, but knew she wouldn’t find anything. She knew it would be the box that was the centre of the smell.
That evening Adam was home late, tired from a first day in a new job. He was distant, sharing little of the actions of his day with Lauren. She responded by being short with him, replying when he did speak to her, with sharp one-word answers.
‘That box of yours smells.’ She tried a direct approach.
He hesitated for a moment, the fork full of food hovering just outside his lips. ‘Am I supposed to ask smells of what?’
‘Cigars of course.’
‘That’s hardly surprising.’
She scraped the remains of her meal into the bin; little caring he hadn't finished. ‘It is if it’s empty, and if it hasn't been used for years.’
The night before she had found it amusing to see his disappointment that there were no cigars in it, after he had been eulogising over the dusty box. She had never believed there would be, but clearly he had. The box itself, although well made, even she could concede that, was in need of a long polish.
When they had both cleared away in the kitchen Adam went through to the sitting room and his new toy. Lauren wandered into the dining room and her drawings.
Adam always experienced a little guilt at the relief he felt when he left a room that Lauren was still in. There were problems in the marriage he was well aware, but he truly believed the move and the new start would help. He had long ago ceased to consider whether they still loved one another. To have stayed together for twelve years was celebration of sorts. It was just a rough patch that couples went through. He could almost convince himself, but not enough to try convincing Lauren.
He was surprised when he picked up the humidor. It had been freshly polished, with beeswax by the look and smell of it. A proper job, not a quick flick with a duster. It could only have been Lauren who had done it; perhaps that was why she had brought his attention to it over the meal. She sounded waspish but that might have been her way of telling him she had done it for him, a gesture of some kind.
Idly he lifted the heavy lid, aware that there was a delightful smell surrounding the box. The interior was full of cigars. Various sizes, from the heavy ring gauge to the slender, the gran corona to the entreacto, different colours, the pale brown of the claro, to the black oscuro, a richness of aroma. He picked one out. The paper band said Macanudo, and he immediately knew, though he had never before heard of it, that this was founded in Jamaica in the 1860’s and was now made using Connecticut Shade wrapper, binder from the San Andres area of Mexico, and a mixture of Jamaican, Mexican and Dominican tobacco for the filler.
All at once he experienced the sensation of burning within his lungs. The smell of the cigars in the box, and the one in his hand, remained mild, yet he fought to control his coughing, as his chest seemed on fire. He was vaguely aware that the other chairs in the room were all occupied, as though a group of people were around him, watching him. He could see their heads encased in a sheath of smoke, a haze of blue and grey that floated up to the ceiling. As the cigar smoke drifted upwards he could see the figures begin to shimmer and wave, like clouds upon a wind. The smoke grew darker, became shadows, as the figures lifted towards then melted into the ceiling.
He must have cried out because the next thing he knew Lauren was in the room with him. He pointed up to the ceiling and they could both clearly see a large scorch mark on the white paint.
‘What the hell are you doing smoking that thing?’
Adam was taken aback to find that he was holding a cigar in his hand, a half smoked cigar.
‘Where did you buy it? Why? You don’t smoke.’
He tried to explain that he had found it in the humidor but of course she had seen it empty the previous night. But then so had he.
Lauren had long gone to bed, in yet another foul mood, when Adam decided it was safe to join her. They had not yet capitulated to separate beds, though they just as well might. He was glad these days when he came up and found her already asleep, although once he had seen her eyes open when she thought he wasn’t looking.
He had smoked a second smaller cigar before locking up for the night. The humidor he had put in the front porch to keep the temperature reasonable.
Lauren was on her back on the bed, the covers partly dishevelled. She seemed, in the gloom of the dimly lit bedroom, to be sprawled out across both sides of the bed. Then Adam saw movement on one side of the bed while Lauren visibly hadn’t moved. It wasn’t her body sprawled across the whole bed; there seemed to be someone else next to her.
At first he had the thought that she had taken a lover and was sleeping next to him, satisfied and spent, flaunting her infidelity as a taunt. That this was ridiculous he immediately realised, and he was torn then in his emotions. His decency wanted him to protect his wife from whatever intruder was lying next to her, but his self-preservation was afraid for himself.
He slowly moved towards the bed; tried not to breathe, then to breathe quietly and with care. He took hold of the edge of the covers, and swiftly pulled it off the bed. Only when the covers were gone could he see, in what light the moon afforded, that there was someone else on the bed with Lauren.
‘What are you…’ Lauren was now half awake.
The shadow figure slipped off the bed and smoothed itself into one corner of the softly furnished room. Adam wanted to turn on the light but was frightened to move. He was sure he saw the shadow scurrying beneath the bed, but he could even now convince himself that the shadow was just that, a shadow. The moon was hiding and seeking behind the clouds, and the room was dancing with unnatural rhythms. How could he be sure what he was seeing?
Then he saw a black shape take up its position at the bottom of the bed. As Lauren demanded that he turn on the light and stop being so stupid, the shadow at the foot of the bed sloped forward and covered her like an eiderdown, but one that soaked into her body until it disappeared, and Lauren swelled slightly from within.
Adam turned on the light and Lauren was asleep on the bed, the covers neatly over her, like atonement.
Lauren was alone again the next morning after Adam had gone to work. He hadn't wanted to mention the night to her, or to admit anything to himself. She worked through until noon, and then gave herself a break. She laid down with a book in the sitting room.
It was a clear crisp afternoon. Sunlight broke in through the yellowing net curtains, lending a relaxed mood to the room which Lauren found hard to share. She began to shift on the sofa to see if she was alone in the room. As she read a page she looked around her before turning to the next as if she was nervous of making the movement. She felt as though she was in a library and others around her would chastise her for making a sound. The clock on the mantelpiece struck the half-hour and she jerked forward in her seat, surprised by the sudden intrusion of noise. The rustle of the pages of the book began to sound magnified, loud and insistent, like a shout at midnight.
She wasn't sure when she first noticed the change
in the room. One moment she was feeling strangely attuned to every sound and movement in it, and the next she was frozen, helpless to respond.
The light playing against the window began to fade until there were shadows in every corner. Furniture became hidden in dark masses of unlit space. Flickers of moving light showered on the wall in front of her, but the innocent shapes and patterns took on a sinister tone that she could not quite discern. Faces appeared on the wall, faces of crying women, and some men; faces of open-mouthed terror calling out for help that the eyes admitted would never come. Faces from which beauty gradually slipped away to be replaced by mean cunning, crueller for the quality of purity it had displaced. Faces that gradually faded into shadow.
Motionless on the sofa she became aware of whispered movement behind her. She tried to turn her head but could only move her eyes. She was dimly conscious of what sounded like black swishing robes, and of someone pacing the floor behind her, and of the light frenzied steps of others. In the reflection of the window in the half gloom, she could vaguely see several figures. A tall corpse-thin figure in robes lighting a thick black candle, a woman kneeling in front of him; oil was placed upon her forehead, it glistened in the muted glare of the candle. She was naked. There was low chanting from different voices; small high voices, and other deep bass voices. Behind them other figures, frightened, excited, passively acquiescent.
Then violent movement overtook the figures as a huge shadowed shape emerged from the blackness at the edge of the room. Wings with claws enveloped the tall thin man, wrapping around him in a fond embrace. A tongue darted from the creature's formless mouth and curled serpent-like around the neck of the man. The others moved silently away, and a wooden box was offered to the creature, and lifted into the air, as if for sacrifice. The tall figure was engulfed so that he struggled and choked. As he slowly died the beast fed from the man, whose face took on a beatific glow of pleasure.
Lauren’s book fell from her numb fingers and the room returned to normal. She could barely remember what she had seen, or was it dreamed? Except she could recall the proffered box, it was Adam's humidor.
When he came home that evening she had cooked a special meal. She was dressed in her best dress, low cut and clinging. The humidor was in pride of place in the centre of the dining table. Its soft aroma of fine cigar smoke was offset by Lauren’s subtle scent.
The food was wonderful and the wine was copious. Adam, despite his reservations about possible motive, eventually relaxed into the atmosphere of the occasion and in his inebriated state began to hope that there was a chance of salvation for the marriage. Lauren drank little but cloaked it cleverly so that Adam wasn’t aware.
When the meal was eaten and the coffee served Lauren moved behind him and leaned into him, her breasts easing into his shoulder. She held a Saint Luis Rey, the wrapper very dark, smooth and oily, the end already cut in readiness. Slowly, Adam deluded himself that it was seductively, she lit it for him.
The humidor was open on the table, the aroma of the passive cigars within a counter balance to the ongoing one Adam was enjoying. There were candles on the table, adding to the illusion of friendly intimacy that Lauren had created.
She picked up a candle and lit the sheaf of paper she had prepared when setting the table. The flames flickered into the air and then she plunged them into the humidor. The loosely packed cigars began to smoulder, the box itself to blacken.
‘What are you doing?’ Adam struggled to get up from his chair but his legs were reluctant. He had drunk so much, and she so little.
Then they both became aware of the movement in the corners of the room. One of the cigars had ignited and a thick pillar of smoke was rising to the ceiling. The room seemed to be active, and yet Adam couldn’t see anyone or anything. At least nothing that stayed still long enough for him to see it.
A sound like liquid flesh squeezing and pulling made Lauren look upwards. From the ceiling indistinct shadows were erupting above her head and dropping like rain. Globules of darkness forced their way out through the plaster until they were in the open, and then as they floated down they coalesced into shapes that were nearly human.
Adam was standing now, the smoke from his lit cigar billowing around his head, a kind of ectoplasm. The cigar smoke seemed to be beckoning the shadows to the room. The humidor on the table was slammed shut, the burning contents ignored.
Lauren started to laugh. Then a large shadow fell upon her from behind and she was pulled to the floor. In the increasing blackness Adam thought he could see a black robed form lying motionless on the floor besides Lauren, holding her. Candles flickered around them, and quiet, frightened figures tried to hide in the shadows. The robed form had the shape of a man but was no longer a man. There was no face, just ruffles of hanging white skin, crinkled like paper, no eyes, and no mouth. The black robes hung deformed from the shrivelled body, wasted, lifeless. The figure was like a cloud of smoke formed into a man-creature, a withered husk on the brink of death.
Adam felt pressure around his neck, as cold claws clamped into his skin. Talon fingers gripped the flesh, cutting deep, drawing out blood. He swung and turned to try to prise the fingers from him, and as he turned he saw what was attached leechlike to his neck. It was large, folded wings hanging to the ground, misshapen horns protruding from the head. The skeletal arms wrapped around Adam were covered in coarse black hair that had worn away in places, to reveal dark, paper-thin skin.
As Adam struggled against the creature he began to feel weaker, and the shadows reflected his weakness. And as the beast was draining Adam's life from him so the figure on the ground was stirring into new life, the black robes filling and swelling as Adam drifted into the darkness. All the time Lauren, lay quietly, conscious but her mind switched off from the horror she had engineered.
The choice was easy to make for Adam. ‘Take her,’ he whispered.
The room immediately cleared and the shadows dispersed. There was no sign of Lauren.
Adam thought he might feel some regret in the morning. For now he opened the humidor, pristine inside, and selected another cigar to enjoy.
HOLDING DARKNESS WITHIN
John Hinton hesitated, pushed open the front door and, after taking a deep inward breath, stepped into the house. Sian Davis, his assistant, followed close behind, her pad in hand, pen poised to take down notes and to keep an accurate record of events as they unfolded. Both of them were certain events would unfold.
Hinton carried a small machine, holding it out in front of him, sweeping the air in broad strokes. The machine looked very much like a photographer’s light meter. It was no more than three inches square and an inch deep. On one end was a small white dome, on the front a dial with calibrations from one to one thousand. But while a photographer’s meter measured light, Hinton’s machine could detect the slightest changes, the tiniest fluctuations, in magnetic fields. Perfect for hauntings.
Hinton was thirty-five, tall and slim with an athletic physique that was a testament to the four hours a week he spent at the gym, combined with regular games of squash and rackets.
Sian Davis had none of these attributes. She was short, dumpy with spiky black hair and had a small tattoo of a rose on her shoulder. And in love, completely unrequited, with Hinton.
There were rumours of a great love affair – some forbidden passion that had ended and left Hinton a scarred, emotional wreck, but she was not sure she set much store by them. People like John Hinton were always the targets for the mythmakers and rumourmongers, and she preferred to make up her own myths and fantasies. They sustained her during long lonely nights and gave her a reason to get up every morning.
‘Ambient temperature in the house very low,’ Hinton was saying and as if to prove his point his breath was misting in front of his face. There was also an oppressive atmosphere in the house – so oppressive it was almost tangible. He had been in many so-called haunted houses and he could always tell when something was actually there. The scientist in him trusted
the readings on the instruments, and when he saw the disturbance in the electro-magnetic fields and the fluctuations in temperature he knew he had something to deal with. But Hinton, the man, relied on his feelings – the primitive instincts that modern man had inherited from his prehistoric ancestors; instincts that modern lifestyles had done so much to dull. In Hinton though, they were honed.
The house he and his assistant had entered was special – a monster of construction, all turrets and towers, and a devil to control with its window faces and hidden doors. The place had been decorated throughout some time in the nineteen-seventies, but the browns, yellows and pinks had faded with age and looked more muted now than when they were first applied. The Fleming’s, the owners of the house, were a retired couple, now in their seventies, he a retired doctor, she a woman who had dedicated her life to the cause of educating others; it was she who had taken the steps to bring the Department in.
Six months ago the couple had started hearing things in their prosaic little life. At first it was nothing more than a few scratches on the ceiling, the odd footstep on the stair when they were both downstairs, but nothing that couldn’t be explained away rationally, a loose board settling into place, birds or mice setting up home in the eaves of the house, nothing to be alarmed about.
The smells were more alarming. In the lounge it was the odour of sour cream, in the bedrooms the musty dirt and straw smell of an animal pen. The kitchen gave off a hint of ozone, smelling like an electrical short circuit; but it was the dining room that had the most distinctive and most repellent aroma. Mrs Fleming described it as ‘the smell of something dead, washed up on a beach’, and as Hinton entered the room he had to agree.
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