Sticky Fingers: Box Set Collection 2: 36 More Deliciously Twisted Short Stories (Sticky Fingers: The Complete Box Set Collection)

by JT Lawrence

  “We’ll leave some lights on,” Derek said. He was better at hiding his tendency to be overprotective than I was. “Maybe the nightmares will stop, now that we’re away from the city.”

  In the city, I worried about bullets and knives and car accidents. After we bought Everland, I worried about Cameron falling down the staircase in the middle of the night, and I worried about the expansive lawns and meadows that surrounded the castle. Where Cam saw giant trees, perfect for climbing, I saw him falling and breaking his collarbone. He saw rocks to clamber over; I saw a head contusion waiting to happen. He loved matches, candles, and the roaring fires in the stone hearth. I made sure all the matches and lighters were on shelves out of his reach.

  “Promise me you’ll never go near the river on your own,” I said to him, holding his arms a little too firmly.

  “It’s hardly a river,” said Derek. “It’s a stream.” Castle, manor. River, stream. I didn’t care. I just didn’t want my boy slipping on wet stones and being swept away. He couldn’t swim.

  “We’ve spoken about this,” Derek said, gently. “One reason we moved here is so we wouldn’t mollycoddle Cameron. He needs some space.”

  “He’s five years old,” I said. Which five-year-old needs space?

  Derek fixed me with a firm look. “Let him be.”

  I didn’t want Cameron to be so far away from us at night, in that small dark room, so we compromised; I set up the old baby video monitor so I could watch and hear him sleep.

  “I’m not being paranoid,” I said to Derek. “Just careful.”

  “It’s okay,” he said, hugging me. “It’s okay.”

  The monitor added to my anxiety. Static would sweep over the screen; a wash of crackle and snow. I would jump up and search the monitor for Cameron’s motionless form beneath his comforter.

  “You should turn the volume down,” said Derek. “You’ll sleep better.”

  "I'm sleeping fine," I lied. If I turned the sound down, how would I know if Cameron needed me? But I took his point. When I looked in the gold-edged mirror, I saw my eyes bruised from lack of sleep.

  “I’ll get Mr Houndstooth to look at it,” said Derek. “Perhaps there’s a way we can get a better connection.”

  "Oh, we shouldn't bother him with that," I said. The groundskeeper gave me the creeps. He had brown teeth and a dirty coat and always stared at me suspiciously with his ratty eyes. The estate agent who had sold us Everland told us that the groundsman came with the house.

  “We don’t need a groundsman,” Derek had said.

  "Houndstooth comes with the house," the agent had reiterated and pulled his lips in a way that conveyed it was non negotiable. The price of the manor was less than half of what it was worth, and we wanted to secure the deal. We agreed in private that we could always come to an understanding at a later stage.

  Mr Houndstooth looked at the baby monitor screen and banged the side of it.

  "I've already done that," I said, in an attempt at humour. Houndstooth didn't smile. Instead, he checked the cables and then huffed his way down the grand stairway to Cameron's room. Once he'd checked the equipment there, he found me in the garden, cutting roses for the kitchen table while the hens pecked at the grass around my feet. He shoved his hands deep in his pockets and told me I'd need to buy a booster from town.

  “While you’re there,” Houndstooth said, “buy some rat poison.”

  “Oh.” I felt uncomfortable. “We wouldn’t want that. We don’t want to poison anything.”

  Not that I had a soft spot for rodents, I just knew the knock-on effects. I didn’t want to accidentally kill any owls or cats. The groundskeeper hawked and spat on the ground. “Suit yourself.”

  He adjusted his hat and stalked off.

  The town was a winding twenty-minute drive away, and our car's clearance was too low to make it a comfortable trip. We were planning on trading in our sedan for a Jeep, to better suit the terrain. Derek and I jokingly called the village a ghost town. There was one grocer, a hardware store, a barber, and not much else. It was dreary and bleak, but I didn't mind that too much. The worst thing about the village was the people. They looked strange, and they dressed in home-sewn clothes. They'd stare at me in a way that made my skin crawl as if they somehow wished me harm. Walking down the main road, we passed a blind man who looked at us as if he could see something, or someone. I squeezed Cameron's shoulder, and we hurried along. Cam and I bought the baby monitor booster from the claustrophobic hardware store with little trouble, although I felt uneasy with the way the shop assistant followed us around. Perhaps they were suspicious of city expats; thought of us as prior residents of a community rife with sin. The cashier in the grocery store ignored my greeting and glared at me as she rang up the items in my shopping basket, her bony hands working automatically to scan the barcodes. I busied myself with chatting to Cameron, ruffling his hair, reminding him to say "please" and "thank you". As I clipped my purse closed, the cashier grabbed my hand—a hawk clutching a mouse—and stared through me with electric eyes. Her cold skin startled me.

  “You should never have bought that house,” she said. Her teeth were sharp grey stones.

  “Mom!” said Cameron, equally alarmed. He pulled on my arm. “Mom!”

  I tried to snatch my hand away, but the claw held it fast. When I looked into the cashier's eyes, she finally let go, and we hurried out of the shop.

  I set up the booster myself. It took over an hour, but at least I wouldn’t have to see Mr Houndstooth again.

  “Hello!” I shouted from our bedroom, eyeing the screen. “Wave at me!”

  Cameron, who was in his room, below, looked into the camera and waved. "Hello, Mommy!"

  The line was still a bit crackly, but we had a good picture, and sound, and I was happy with that. We ate dinner early that night—cottage pie with peas and carrots—and had a longer than usual story-time while a storm percolated outside our stone walls. I felt comforted with Cameron on my lap, a small body that had always been generous with cuddles and smiles.

  At around midnight, I heard the whispering for the first time. I sat up.

  “Can you hear that?” I asked Derek. He didn’t answer, so I shook him awake and repeated my question. The wind was whipping tree branches against the manor walls, and thunder rolled and boomed in the lightning-scratched sky.

  “Just a storm,” he said, pulling me back down and slinging his arm over my torso in a sleepy embrace.

  But it wasn’t the storm. The thing I’d heard had come from inside, and it had sounded like a child whispering. I escaped Derek’s slumber-heavy arm and went to look at the baby monitor, rubbing my eyes to dispel their drowsiness. The flagstone floor chilled my feet. I blinked at the jumpy picture; despite the fuzziness and flashing, I could see Cameron sleeping soundly. I felt so much love for him. He was such a beautiful boy, and we were so lucky to have him. I never took my son for granted. The screen fizzed again as the wind and branches blasted the castle. Satisfied that he was safe, I was about to turn back to my warm bed when I heard the whispering again. It was coming from the speaker of the baby monitor. A child’s voice. I blinked again and stepped closer. Cameron’s lips weren’t moving. My nose was almost touching the screen when a new wave of static swept over it. I saw a small figure in the corner of the room, looking straight into the camera with shining eyes.

  “Wave at me,” she whispered.

  Fright sent a power jet of ice water through my body. It felt as if my feet didn’t touch the floor as I raced to Cameron’s room and smashed the light switch on. I searched and searched, but there was no one in the corner. Cameron didn’t wake up, despite the light shining in his face and the noise of my gasping. I clutched my chest—my heart vibrating beneath the bone—trying to catch my breath. When the shaking subsided, I scooped Cameron into my arms and carried him upstairs, placing him in the middle of our king-sized bed. I held him tight, watching him sleep as the storm gradually subsided, my mind fizzing like the picture on the sno
wy screen behind us.

  “I know what I saw,” I said to Derek the next morning as he made coffee.

  “I don’t doubt that you saw something.”

  “But?”

  “But it could have been anything,” he said. “You said, yourself, that the weather was interrupting the feed. Your mind was playing tricks on you.”

  “I saw a person,” I said, and I felt my face pale as I remembered the fright of it. “A little girl.”

  “The human mind often interprets shapes as faces,” said Derek. “And the whispering was the static caused by the electrical storm. I can see you got a proper scare. I’m sorry I didn’t wake up.”

  The sun streamed into the kitchen, cheerful, as if it were an ordinary day. Frustrated and exhausted, I covered my eyes; scratchy from lack of sleep. Derek placed a mug of stovetop espresso with warmed milk on the table in front of me and then rested his hands on my hunched-up shoulders. The combination of sunbeams, the aroma of coffee beans, and his reassuring touch made my muscles relax. Of course it had been an illusion. The cashier at the grocer had shocked me, that was all. She had seeded a nightmare of repressed trauma. It all made sense in the daylight.

  Derek let go and began rinsing the espresso maker in the vintage kitchen sink.

  “Do you think we should tell him?” I asked. “Tell Cameron, I mean?”

  Derek froze. The water streamed from the tap and swirled, untouched, down the drain.

  “It’s the right thing to do,” I said. “Wouldn’t you want to know?”

  Derek stared at me for a while and shook his head. "No," he said and turned off the tap.

  Later that day, I was walking around the manor grounds with Cameron. The property was huge and filled with organic snares: ditches; thorns; stinging nettles. We found the stream and watched the cold water gurgle by. I stopped to slap the ravenous mosquitoes attacking my ankles, and while I balanced precariously on one foot, I noticed a garden shed I'd never seen before, camouflaged in a carpet of moss and ivy. I called to Cam to be careful while he played at fishing, made my way to the hut, and wrenched the door open. The darkness inside glittered with golden motes. I had to step in to get my eyes to adjust to the dim light, but when I did, the rank odour of a dead animal assailed me. I gagged and turned away, wanting to escape, but the door slammed shut. I tried to open it, but it was stuck. I hammered my fist against the rattling metal.

  “Cameron?” I shouted. “Cameron?” I worried about him near the water. “Cameron?!”

  There was a squeaking sound inside the shed, and I knew without looking that it was a rat. More than one rat. I smashed at the door, but it wasn’t moving. I pictured my son slipping on the shiny pebbles and falling into the stream, being swept away in its gentle pull. A rat tried to climb my leg, and I kicked it off. When my foot returned to the ground, there was a sickening squeal. I had accidentally crushed one of them. Another rat began to climb, and my skin erupted in welts I could not see. I screamed and ran my hands over my scalp, petrified that a creature would somehow get tangled in my hair. I pounded on the metal and tried to kick it.

  "Cam!" I shouted, nerves like needles. Just as I felt my anxiety spiral out of control, ready to strangle me, the door scraped open. I launched out of the shed and straight into Mr Houndstooth. He grabbed me, and I flailed against his solid body.

  “Let me go!” I shouted, and he did, causing me to fall backwards onto the weeds and rocks.

  Breathless, I looked up at him, a monster in silhouette. I shielded my eyes from the sun so I could see his face. Some rats scampered out of the hut, and Houndstooth watched them with distaste.

  I told you to buy rat poison, I imagined him thinking.

  I got to my knees, and then my feet, clamouring over to the stream. Cameron was gone. I ran alongside the body of water, calling his name. Just as I suspected the worst, I saw him. He was walking into the water as if someone had hypnotised him. He was knee-deep, then waist-deep, then the water flowed over his shoulders.

  “Stop!” I shouted, but he couldn’t hear me. I saw his head go under the water. My mind crackled with panic. I sprinted towards him, slipping on the algae-painted stones and smashing down onto the rocks, cracking my elbow. The flare of pain didn’t stop me from wrenching myself up again and splashing into the cold dark water into which my son had disappeared.

  It was a small pocket of water, and his body was easy to find. He wasn't kicking or struggling at all. I grabbed his little body and hoisted him out, a howl escaping my throat. I carried him, scrabbling over the slippery stones and mud, almost falling again. Before I reached dry land, I felt his arms and legs coil around me, and he turned his cold face to me and buried it in the crook of my neck.

  “Cameron! How dare you?” demanded Derek, who was beside himself with worry and fright at seeing his wife carrying his son’s limp, soaked body up the lawn pathway. Cameron sat near the fire in the blanket I’d wrapped him in. We were all shaking.

  “I’m sorry, Daddy,” the boy said.

  “You gave your mother a terrible fright,” he said. “She’s hurt her arm.”

  “Derek, please,” I said. “It’s nothing. Nothing compared to—”

  “I’m sorry, Mommy,” he said. His wide eyes filled with tears, and his face contorted in distress. I couldn’t stand seeing his pain and rushed over to him, pulling him towards me. I began to weep, too. We had come so close to losing him.

  “What on earth were you thinking?” asked Derek. His tone was less aggressive now, but it still resounded accusingly in the stone room. “You know you can’t swim. You know you aren’t allowed near that river.”

  “There was someone in the water,” Cameron said.

  “There was no one in the water,” I said, as gently as I could.

  “There was,” he insisted. “When I looked down to see my reflection, it looked like me, but it wasn’t. There was someone else there.”

  “No,” I said. “It was just the light. The ripples.”

  “I knew you wouldn’t believe me,” he said. “But she was there.”

  My throat constricted. “She?”

  “She’s my friend. She comes to my room at night and tells me stories.”

  My stomach contracted sharply. “What kind of stories?”

  “Stop your nonsense,” said Derek, looking spooked. “Stop your nonsense this minute.”

  “But—” said Cameron.

  Derek would hear no more. He left the room, leaving nothing but the silence of an un-slammed door.

  That night I watched the baby monitor screen obsessively for the child in the corner; the little girl who almost drowned my son, but she did not appear. With the waves of pain emanating from my elbow, the shock and the sleep deprivation, I felt like I was going mad. When I looked in the mirror, a wild woman stared back. I forced Derek to go down to the stream where I had found the nightmarish shed strangled with weeds. It wasn’t there.

  “Fire him,” I said to Derek.

  “Who? Houndstooth?”

  “He could have been the one who locked me in.”

  Derek took a deep breath. “You want me to fire the groundskeeper for perhaps locking you in an imaginary shed?”

  My insides lit up with anger. “You don’t believe me?”

  He ran his fingers through his hair and looked around at the wild vegetation as if to prove his point.

  “You think it was some kind of … episode?”

  “I think this move has been harder on you than you realise. You’re not yourself.”

  I stood there, in the wild grass and weeds, wondering if I’d ever been myself. I wondered if I knew who I was at all.

  The next afternoon I heard Cam crying before I saw him. I picked up my pace and found him in the workshop where Houndstooth kept his tools.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked him. “What’s happened?”

  “Houndstooth,” sobbed Cameron. “He’s a mean man.”

  “What?” I demanded. “Why? What did he do?”

 
Cameron just shook his head and sobbed. I stripped him right there, in the claustrophobic room that smelt like pesticides and petrol, and checked his body for any kind of bruising or damage. I found nothing out of the ordinary, except a box of matches in his pocket. I dressed him again, then I inspected the grimy workspace and saw a white powder sprinkled there. I knew, without a doubt, it was rat poison.

  "You're fired," I said to Houndstooth on the static telephone line. At first, he was quiet, so I had to repeat myself.

  “You’re making a mistake,” he said, his voice trembling with what I guessed was anger.

  “I don’t think I am. Collect your things, leave your keys, and then I never want to see you again.”

  There was an eerie silence.

  “You’ll be sorry,” he said.

  A few days later, Cameron told me he saw the groundskeeper lurking on the property. “What was he doing?” I asked.

  “Nothing. Just standing and—”

  “Standing and what?”

  “Watching me.”

  A chill splashed my insides, and I had to sit down.

  Derek was furious that I had fired Houndstooth, so I tried to pick up some slack in the manor's maintenance work. Since we had sold our business, I found myself floundering. I realised work was essential to my mental health, so I threw myself into it. It also allayed my guilt at firing Houndstooth. I taught myself how to re-wire switches and fix dripping taps. I trenched flower beds and pruned the apple trees, and I paid Cameron to rake up dead leaves. The exercise was good for me, and I fell into bed exhausted at night, knowing I had accomplished something. I was sleeping well for the first time since we had moved to the country. After a particularly productive day mending and cleaning the chicken coop, I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. At midnight, I woke up with a start. I felt a cold weight on my chest. I bolted up in bed, and the exhalation following my gasp was a white mist. I twisted my neck to look at the monitor and blinked. Gasping again, I flew out of bed to get a closer look, and the wave of cold air nettled my skin into gooseflesh. Cameron's bed was empty.