by Jack Lewis
A shudder ran through her, and she felt the urge to put on every hoodie she had to stop the chill. She stared at the glass and the chair, and a sickening realisation hit her. Someone had been in her room while she was asleep. They’d sat in the chair and watched her for God knows how long, drinking their whiskey while she lay lost in the confines of her subconscious, unaware that someone gazed at her. How long had they been there? Had they watched her all night?
Maybe it was Billy. In fact, it most likely was. But why would he do that? If he wanted to be with her, he could have just come in and said hello; he didn’t have to watch her in the dark. She smelled it again. The smell brought back memories of the first time Billy had gotten her to try the spirit. She’d swallowed it down, but the liquid had burned her throat. She couldn’t tell if this whiskey glass smelled like the brand he liked to drink or not. She was no connoisseur.
She thought of the chair in the hallway, sat in the darkness as if it was waiting for someone. She remembered the figure creeping through the room with no exits, and the shadow looming in the window frame while Billy stood feet away on his ladder.
It was time to go. Whether Magda was ready or not, Tamara had to get out of there. She’d get Billy to drive her home and then she’d deal with the sale of the house from miles away in the living room of her own house, where the wallpaper didn’t crumble and the light switches worked.
When she finally brought herself to get dressed and went downstairs, she saw Magda in the lobby with the phone next to her ear. Magda gave her a sharp glance, and then carried on her conversation.
“I’m so sorry to hear that, Larry. I hope you’ll feel better soon. No, no, don’t worry about me. Billy and Tamara are here. I’ll be okay until you feel well enough.”
She put the phone down. She wore a summer dress that reached past her knees. The bright flowers and airy fabric was entirely out of keeping with the bleak winter outside.
“Larry’s been taken ill,” she said. “Doctor Thorpe drove out in his Nissan last night. He’s ordered him two weeks of bedrest.”
Tamara walked off the last step and touched down on the cold floorboards of the lobby. The grandfather clock was propped up against the wall to her side, and the fireplace on the wall in front stood empty, with nothing but a cavernous hole that spread up through the house and to the chimney, where Tamara knew it was bricked up.
“You’re kidding?” she said.
Already, she knew what this meant. With no caregiver to look after her, there was no way they could leave Magda alone. Tamara could probably have persuaded herself to just go, but Billy wouldn’t have it. The decent part of him would always tell her that she needed to stay and make sure Magda was okay, and Tamara wouldn’t be able to think of any reason to contradict him.
“Listen, Magda,” she said.
Magda turned her head.
“Yes?”
“I went to see dad yesterday.”
Magda gave a grave nod.
“And when I went in the crypt,” continued Tamara, “I found his coffin open. Someone had pried off the lid.”
Magda shook her head. An angry look twisted on her face.
“Not this again. Bloody teenagers from the village. Playing pranks or seeing what they can steal, I don’t know which, but they’re a nuisance.”
Tamara thought again of her father and his toe nails that had grown so long that the coffin could barely contain them. The visit had been a mistake, she decided, but at least it was done.
After breakfast Billy walked into the woods to chop wood for a black wood burner that he’d found. With the fireplaces all blocked it was the only thing they could use to make some heat. Magda clipped two thick leads to her dogs and put on her coat, grinning at Tamara as she left the house.
As the morning drifted by and the afternoon hours drained away, Tamara spent the rest of the day cataloguing what few items filled the rooms of the manor. By the end she filled a sheet of paper with listings such as ‘weird one-eyed doll’ and ‘portraits of sheep in field x2.’
After finishing the whole of the first floor west wing, she found herself at Magda’s room. She decided that she’d go in and make sure that it was clean and accessible, because the last thing she wanted was for Magda to have another fall. If that happened, Tamara knew she’d be the one who had to help her up.
Magda’s room had an acrid smell of mold and talcum powder, as if all the mildew of the house concentrated here and sent its spores into the air. A dresser sat next to the window, and on it was a cracked mirror. White talcum powder dusted the surface of the dresser and gave off a soapy smell, though it was too weak to counteract the mold.
Next to the dresser was a clothes hamper. Tamara stood and stared at it, and she felt a memory surface from the depths of her mind. It froze her in place as she relived it.
She remembered running through the lobby with a plate of biscuits. Her dog, Bullseye, darted in front of her, and she tripped over his furry body and the plate flew out of her hand. It smashed into a dozen pieces on the floorboards, and Bullseye’s ears pricked up and he immediately set to work hoovering up the crumbs with his giant tongue.
Magda walked out of the dining room and saw the mess. She stared at Tamara with a stern gaze. Without a word, she picked her up. Tamara tried to squirm out of her arms but Magda’s grip was like iron, and she felt the air being squeezed out of her lungs.
She carried her up the stairs and into her bedroom, where she opened the hamper. Tamara saw her mum’s dirty blouses and stained leggings. Magda threw her in, and before Tamara could react, she sat on the lid.
Tamara lay alone in the darkness of the hamper. No light could penetrate the tightly-thatched box, and the smell of dirty clothes made it hard to breathe. She could sense the dark mass of her mother shutting her in, pressing her weight against the lid and turning the hamper into a casket.
She kicked and punched at the lid but it wouldn’t budge, and she thought she might never get out. She prayed for her dad to come and release her from her black prison, but he was in the woods and there was no way he would hear her.
Finally she stopped struggling and she lay still. Suddenly she sensed something in the darkness. A face pressing close to hers, its nose close enough to sniff her. As she felt cold breath blow on her face, she screamed and screamed until finally the lid opened and daylight streamed in.
Now, years later and fully grown, the memory of it was still enough to make her eyes sting. She looked around her mother’s room and got the sense that it was a bad place, and that the best thing to do was turn and leave.
~
She lay in bed later that night, her adult-sized body finding no comfort in the child-sized bed. The table was across from her, and she could almost make out its outline in the pitch black of the room. She’d already removed the chair, of course. She never wanted to see that thing again.
She wished she’d had a chance to talk to Billy about the whiskey glass, but he’d been busy in the woods all day, and she hadn’t wanted to broach the subject in the dining room while Magda was there. Tamara had glared at her mum throughout the meal, reliving the darkness of the hamper and wondering if Magda even remembered the incident.
The shadows crept over the bedroom window. The moon outside tried to stream pale light through the window, but a cloud soon smothered it. Tamara shut her eyes tight and willed sleep to come, but it was lost in the tunnels of her mind, racing against the anxiety and the worries that filled her when the sun dropped.
She had to leave Towneley Manor. She couldn’t do it until she knew someone would take care of Magda, because she knew Billy wouldn’t go. She’d work something out.
A smell crept into the room. It drifted through the open space and then crawled onto her bed, teasing its way over the covers and up to her nose. She smelled the aroma of whiskey; strong and sour, and it reminded her of the burning in her throat the night she first tried it.
She didn’t dare turn her head. A cold dread filled her che
st, and her body shivered as if she had nothing covering her. Part of her thought that she’d turn and see the chair back in her room, with a figure sitting in it and watching her in the darkness.
Towneley Manor wasn’t going to have any power over her, she decided. She wasn’t a child anymore. She slowly started to turn her head, bracing herself against whatever waited in the room.
There was nothing. She closed her eyes and let out a trailing breath. Stupid, she scolded herself.
The she heard a noise outside her room. Something was in the hallway. At first it sounded like something tapping on the floorboards. It came from the end, near the library, but the sound grew, and she realised it was coming closer.
She sat up and pulled the covers tight over her chest. She watched the door, worried that if she blinked it would fly open and a dark mass would hover in the doorframe.
The sound tapped louder until soon she realised it wasn’t a tap. It was a scraping sound.
Blood rushed to her ears and she heard her pulse pound. She realised what the noise was. As it drew closer down the hallway and neared her bedroom door, she knew that it was the sound of toenails scraping on the floor. She listened to them scratch on the wood.
She knew who was making the noise, but she didn’t want to say the words. Not even in her head. It couldn’t be true.
The nails scratched again on the wood.
Was it….her father?
Ridiculous. Goddamn ridiculous.
The sound paused when it reached her doorframe. She reached for her phone and grabbed it in her hand, ready to flick the light and send the blue stream across the bedroom. At the same time she daren’t use it, scared that if she made a sound, then the door knob would start to turn and whatever waited outside would cross the threshold.
The silence stretched out into minutes, and her skin crawled as a chill spread over it. She waited, powerless as the thing lingered outside her room, toenails scraping on the floorboards every so often.
She thought back to the crypt. To her father in his coffin, yellow nails curled in on themselves.
She pushed the thought away. A sliver of moonlight shone through the window as the cloud passed and the moon was freed. She sensed movement behind the door, and she gripped the edges of her covers and held them so tight that her fingertips hurt.
The scraping noise moved away from the door, and Tamara couldn’t help the sigh leave her mouth as the heard it go down the hall and then get quieter, until finally she was left in silence.
Chapter Six
The next morning she stood in the lobby and stared at the clock on her phone. The second it hit nine AM, she dialled the number of the village estate agents. As the ringtone sounded in her ear, Billy walked past her, gave her a smile and then walked out of the manor. The door clanged shut behind him. Somewhere, deep in the bowels of the house, she heard Magda thump around her bedroom.
A man answered. Tamara told him that she was looking to make a listing. She told him how big the building was, how many rooms it had, and she could sense from the excitement in the man’s voice that he was already picturing the commission he would make. He asked for the address.
“Kingston Terrace,” she told him.
“Kingston, Kingston,” said the man. He had the annoying habit of repeating his words. “I don’t know where that is. Remind me again?”
She realised that in her hurry to get the words out, she’d told him her and Billy’s address.
“Sorry,” she said, aware that her words came too fast and that she sounded too keen. “Not Kingston. The address is Towneley Manor.”
There was silence on the line. The man gave a cough, and then spoke in a grave voice.
“I’m afraid I can’t take on the listing.”
“Why not?”
“There are other agents in the village, Miss. You might try one of those.”
“I don’t understand.”
He coughed again. “I can give you the number for Dune & Co, if you’d like?”
She wasn’t in the mood to argue. With every minute she spent in the house she felt her body grow cold, and part of her knew that if she stayed any longer she would be stuck here, like the doors would lock and she’d be forced to wither inside its draughty halls.
“Get me your manager,” she said.
The man didn’t respond, but she could tell he’d set the phone down without hanging up. A few minutes later, a woman answered. Her voice was severe, like the headmistress at Tamara’s boarding school.
“Miss Towneley, is it?” said the woman.
“It’s Mrs, and my surname is Deacon.”
“Well, Mrs. Deacon, my name is Angela Codon, and I’m the manager of Blackley Estates. I hope you’ll forgive Brent; he’s an excellent agent, but not one for talking on the phone.”
“Whatever. Just tell me why you can’t list Towneley Manor.”
She heard footsteps above her, and she looked up to see Magda walking down the staircase with a long cardigan trailing down to her feet and brushing against the steps. Tamara held her mobile closer to her ear and held a finger in the air to her mother to tell her she’d only be a minute. She opened the front door of the manor and stepped outside into the chill. She didn’t want Magda listening in to her call.
“Mrs. Deacon,” said the crackly voice in her ear.
“Sorry, I was just-”
“Mrs. Deacon?”
She held her phone out in front of her. Outside the manor the signal had dropped to a single bar. She walked a few paces forward, but nothing happened. She looked in front of her and saw the woods spread out ahead, trees standing silent and blotting out all the light. Billy was in the woods somewhere, she knew.
She turned and walked back into the manor. This time, the lobby was empty.
“Can you hear me now?”
“Ah yes. As I was saying, Mrs. Deacon, we simply cannot take on the sale of the manor. It’s a delicate subject.”
“Don’t worry about that, just tell me why not.”
“Well, you see, Towneley Manor is on our blacklist.”
“What?”
“Thirty years ago,” said Angela, “one of our agents was invited to value the house. He was there for hours, and when he returned to the office, he was in a state. I was a typist back then, so I saw it all for myself. His face was horribly pale, and he kept looking behind him as if he expected someone to be there.”
Tamara paced along the floorboards.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “I’m not inviting you to a séance. You’re an estate agent, aren’t you? Well, I want to sell a house. Or start the process, at least. I would have thought the prospect of the commission would be enough for you.”
“No,” said Angela, in a firm voice. “I’m afraid we cannot help you, Mrs. Deacon. I wish you well. Goodbye.”
The line went dead, and Tamara looked at her phone and saw that Angela had cut the call.
~
Later that evening she stood under the night sky. She wore a coat thick enough for an arctic expedition, with fur lined around the collar and tickling her neck whenever she moved. Despite the padding she still felt tendrils of the cold night creep over her body. Billy was inside. Before she and Magda left by the front door, he had been stood under the fireplace shining the light from his phone up into the crevice and trying to see if it was, as Tamara had told him, bricked up.
Magda wore a thin jacket, though she didn’t seem to shiver. She held the lead of the smallest dog, Rupert, while Tamara gripped the thick nylon that kept Butch, a German shepherd, from running away.
Magda unclipped the lead and let Rupert scurry off toward the grass. She turned to Tamara.
“Let him go,” she said, nodding at Butch. “He needs to have a wander.”
“You sure?”
She gave her a condescending smile. “They’ve lived here longer than you,” she said. “They know their way around by now.”
Tamara gave Butch a stroke on his head and then set him fre
e. He padded along the grass and joined his friend Rupert, and both dogs pressed their noses against the ground and sniffed their way around.
“Have you had your painkillers?” said Tamara.
“You sound like Larry.”
“I wish Larry was here. Billy and I need to leave soon, you know.”
Magda put her bony hands in her pockets. She looked up at the night sky. A smoky cloud seeped across it and marked the blackness with a grey smear. Tamara smelled the faint twinge of a bonfire. There were farmhouses a few miles away, and she knew from her youth that the farmers often lit fires on their lands. Once, she had walked to the nearest one and she’d seen the black scorch marks on the fields.