Tearing up the buckled floorboards took longer than he’d planned, though. By the time night set in, he still had half of the floor to finish. With the last of the light, Guy measured the space he would need to re-board and roughed up some calculations for how much wood he would need to purchase. Then it was another rushed bath outside, and he changed into some warmer clothes for night and put the day’s clothes into a bag for a deep clean when he got home.
As he sat at the dining room table and chewed on cured meat and tinned vegetables by the glow of his gas lamp, Guy ran through a mental list of what still needed to be finished. He’d made good progress on the family room, the only part of the building that needed serious work. He still needed to tear up the carpet in the upstairs rooms and sand the floor down, deal with the wallpaper, repaint, and clear out the remaining clutter. Plus, the yard needed clearing—he would have to see if he could borrow a lawnmower from someone—
A scratching sound pulled Guy’s attention up. It reminded him of nails on wood. An animal in the attic? I keep forgetting about the loose ceiling tiles. There could be more mould up there, too. Lovely.
He scowled as he continued to eat. Chasing an animal out of the house could throw up a whole host of problems if it was large and inclined to bite. Especially as it was in the highest level of the house, he would just have to hope it was something relatively benign.
The scrabbling was unrelenting, and Guy’s subconscious tracked the noise as it travelled from one end of the house and back, the scuffing sound occasionally stopping just above him. He wanted it out, but it was too dark to hunt down the creature that night. Having to keep a flashlight trained on a panicked animal would only handicap him. He would stand a better chance in the morning, with natural light.
Guy spent the remainder of his evening cutting up and bagging the guest room’s carpet. The work was tedious with only the gas lamp to light it, and he gave up shortly after nine. The scrabbling continued intermittently, keying his nerves tightly, but he was exhausted enough to think it wouldn’t keep him awake. He was right. Once he got into his sleeping bag, he only remembered rolling over once before sleep dragged him under.
Chapter Twelve
April 1965
“Then we’ll move!” Louise slapped her tea towel onto the bench and began untying her apron. “We’ll move, again, and you can get a job somewhere else, as long as they don’t examine your references too closely—”
“Stop it.” Thomas let the plate slide back into the sink. Louise’s frantic struggle with her apron’s knot only made it tighter. He came up behind her and took over, gradually easing the ties out. She sighed and slumped forward while he worked.
“I’m sorry. I’m just—”
“I know. Me, too.”
“It’s exhausting.” Her voice was ragged. She wiped at her face, and Thomas knew she wanted him to think the dampness came from the sink’s steam, so he didn’t say anything. She swallowed. “The constant worry. You’re getting almost no sleep. Something’s got to give.”
“I know.”
“And our savings are almost gone…” She lifted her head and waved a hand at the room. “This beautiful house. You thought it would let you get away from her, didn’t you?”
Thomas didn’t answer. He’d initially couched the idea of moving into the forest as a metaphorical sea change. The children will have more room to play! Safer than the city! We could afford a bigger house! He’d never told Louise the real driving force had been Amy. She must have just guessed. She knew him too well for him to hide much.
The knot came undone, and Louise pulled off the apron. Her face was drawn and grey, and she wouldn’t meet his eyes. “It’s true, isn’t it? We moved all the way out here to get away from her, and she followed us anyway.”
Thomas licked his lips. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe we should move again. Go somewhere far away. Change our names. Maybe it’s the only way to get free of this.”
“The kids…” Louise groaned and rested her back against the kitchen bench. “They’ll hate it. They’ve only just gotten used to here.”
“They’ll adjust.”
“Can we even afford it? We were stretching our finances to buy this place, and if you have to give up your job, as well—”
“Mum.”
Both Thomas and Louise startled. Daniel stood in the open kitchen door, his face pinched and unhappy. Rebecca hovered just behind him, holding her toy bear so tightly that she looked as though she were strangling it.
“What’s wrong?” Thomas glanced towards the window. The yard was empty. He hated himself for being so on-edge all the time.
Daniel scuffed his shoe on the mat. “That lady was here again. You wanted me to tell you if I saw her.”
“Where?” Thomas pressed closer to the window. It had been his job to watch the children while they played outside, but the argument had drawn his attention away. “Did she come out of the forest?”
“Yep,” Rebecca piped up. Her voice held the petulant tilt that seemed perfectly judged to fray Thomas’s nerves, but he felt too sick to be bothered by it. “She said mean stuff. She said Mummy was a horse.”
“Whore,” Daniel corrected.
Louise made a faint choking noise then swept forward and scooped Rebecca into her arms. She grabbed Daniel’s hand and began tugging him into the dining room.
Thomas knew he wasn’t responsible, but guilt made his palms sweaty. “Lou. Where are you going?”
“To find Georgie.” Her eyes were round and wild, and her cheeks were sheet-white. “You can start thinking about how we’ll get a new house.”
Thomas braced his hands on the bench and listened to Louise murmuring to her children. He kept scanning the tree line, his focus skimming back and forth over the space, as he waited for his nausea to subside.
She was right there. Out in the open. Talking to my children. I was supposed to be watching them. And I didn’t see—
He snatched a plate out of the sink and hurled it against the wall. Its shattered fragments tumbled to the floor as Thomas pressed his palms against his closed eyes. He felt colder than the temperature allowed for.
She slinks closer every day. She won’t be satisfied until she’s destroyed our lives. We can move, but what if she follows again? Even if we change our names, even if we go into hiding, she’ll never stop searching for us. Never.
He stared into the forest. She was in there, somewhere, perhaps watching him even as he helplessly searched for her. Thomas felt stretched unbearably thin; he didn’t know how much longer he could hold on before he snapped.
His gaze fell to the chopping block beside the sink. The knife handles glittered in the dull light.
“I’m going outside,” Thomas called.
It only took a second for Louise to appear in the doorway, Georgie cradled in her arms, her face tense. “Why?”
“I don’t know. To see if I can break the stalemate.” He pulled the longest knife out of the block. He’d only ever used it to cut vegetables, and holding it in a defensive stance felt strange. “To see if I can get us free, somehow.”
“She’s dange—”
“I know.” He ducked forward to press a kiss to Louise’s cheek. She didn’t return it, but the tightness around her eyes loosened.
“Thomas, be safe.” She followed him to the kitchen door.
It was still unlocked from the children’s play session, so he pushed the wooden slab open then handed her the key. She squeezed his hand when their fingers came into contact, then Thomas stepped outside and shivered against the wind. The day was colder than it had appeared.
He waited for Louise to lock the door behind him, then he began moving towards the forest. When he looked over his shoulder, he could make out Louise’s pale face in the kitchen window and glimpses of the top of Georgie’s head as she bounced him in her arms.
Thomas flexed sweating fingers around the knife’s handle. His lungs ached every time he drew air into them. The wind snatched at his shirt
and hair and wormed through every tiny hole in the fabric. It felt like icy fingers brushing over his skin, and Thomas repressed a shudder.
Her eyes followed him—he was sure of it—but he couldn’t see her. He stopped at the clearing’s edge and squinted into the kaleidoscope of shadows between the trees. He set his shoulders and put conviction into his voice. “I want to talk!”
A branch snapped somewhere to his right. Thomas swivelled in its direction, but he couldn’t tell if the cause had been man-made or natural. His mouth was dry. He swirled his tongue over the teeth in an effort to wet them. “I know you’re there. Come out and talk to me.”
A small animal chattered as it darted through the branches. Dead leaves fluttered past Thomas’s shoulders. He thought he saw motion a few dozen paces ahead of himself, buried amongst the trees and vines, and moved towards it.
The knife felt heavy. He tried to keep his grip on it tight, but doubts were screaming through his mind. Can I really go through with this? Even if she’s pure evil, even after the hell she’s put my family through, can I murder her in cold blood?
Yes, he answered himself. Because if you don’t, she’ll keep moving closer, and closer, until she’s breathing over you as you sleep. He straightened his back and tightened his grip on the knife, but that couldn’t stop his hand from trembling visibly. Your family needs this.
The wind formed a strange echo as it wormed its way through the boughs. The rustles, creaks, and scrapes of moving branches enveloped Thomas. They masked any sounds a human might make and disoriented him as he hunted for more signs of motion amongst the rough-textured trunks and vines snaking across his field of vision.
It hadn’t been so bad when he was in the clearing, out in the open, where he could watch his back. But inside the woods, he could be within an arm’s length of Amy and wouldn’t even know she was there until her nails raked over his skin.
He fought the shiver that wanted to run through him. Signs of weakness would only make things worse. He had to keep his voice hard and commanding and his actions purposeful, no matter how badly he wanted to retreat to the clearing.
“Stay away from my family.” He raised his voice to make sure she heard, even though it cracked. “Come near them again, and I’ll… I’ll kill you.”
The words sounded phony. He couldn’t stop the tremor in the hand holding the knife, and he knew the glint of shaking metal would be easy to see in the dim forest.
Thomas hadn’t used his hands for violence since schoolyard scraps when he was a child. He tried to visualise slicing the blade into Amy, sinking it into the space between her ribs and watching bright-red blood pour over his fingers. The image filled him with sick horror.
I can’t do it. The image morphed. Thomas pictured Amy in front of him, her arms held wide and a manic smile stretching her pale lips. His arms were like rubber; she nudged the blade aside as though it were cardboard then stepped closer, the pale fingers reaching forward to envelop him…
I can’t. He was about to be sick. I can’t kill her, and I can’t win.
An animal scurried across dried leaves, and Thomas flinched. He began backing towards the forest’s edge, trying to watch all sides without seeming flighty. Amy loved weakness, fed on it, delighted in it. It would be dangerous to give her that pleasure.
Something glittered on the tree to his right. The bark had been cut, and amber sap beaded around the scores. The damage had been on the wrong side of the trunk to see when walking forward but was clearly visible in retreat. Thomas’s nerves were wound to their breaking point, and his mind screamed for him to get back to the sanctuary of his house’s threshold, but a dark curiosity held him still. The marks created a word, and he knew what it would say before he even read it.
Thomas.
He touched the cuts. Golden sap dribbled from them and ran down the rough bark, but it was long dry. He stepped back and saw his name on another tree, and then another, and another. Nausea rose, and the metallic taste of panic flooded his mouth.
Has she marked every tree in the damn forest?
A branch cracked behind him. Thomas’s fractured courage broke. He ran.
His breath was ragged, and his pulse throbbed as he burst out of the woods. She was just behind him, he knew, her arm outstretched to snag his shirt, and he reflexively arched his back to avoid the stab of her fingernails.
He hit the kitchen door. The thud jarred him, and he blinked watering eyes as he turned to the clearing. It was bare. He lifted his gaze towards the woods, but they appeared just as barren as always.
She was still watching him, though. Her attention was unrelenting, heavier than a cinder block tied around his neck. A soft click sounded as Louise unlocked the door, then the solid wood disappeared from his back.
“What happened?” Louise’s voice was hoarse. She took his arm, her fingers shaky as she pulled him into the house.
Thomas couldn’t bring himself to look at her. Sweat beaded over his skin, running down the gap between his shoulder blades, as he backed into the kitchen. He didn’t move his attention from the woods.
“I don’t know. I didn’t see her, but she was there. Somehow. She won’t show herself, but she’s there, watching us, watching our children… and I don’t know what to do anymore.”
“What happened to the knife?”
He glanced down. He didn’t remember releasing the blade, but his hands were empty. Dread filled his chest like a cold weight as he lifted his eyes to the shifting trees.
She has it now.
Chapter Thirteen
The sound of breaking glass was so loud and real that it came through Guy’s sleep. He sat up, blinking slowly in the dim light, and stared about the room in a fugue of tiredness.
Just another dream. That’s all.
The images were foggy and fading quickly. The dream had been about words floating in a forest, he thought. And two children. Something bad had happened, and he was worried for the kids. For half a second, he managed to recall their faces—round and pouting, a hard glare for the boy and a halo of curls for the girl—then the image dissolved.
Guy lay back down and adjusted the pillow. The chilled air drew goose bumps over his arms, but that night, he’d been prepared and covered the sleeping bag with extra blankets. He closed his eyes and waited to drift back under.
Whispers scratched at his ears. Guy snapped his eyes open but kept still, breath held, to listen. He was sure he’d heard a woman’s voice coming from deeper in the house. The world seemed to hang in suspension for a moment, then a floorboard on the ground floor groaned.
Ignore it. Your imagination is going wild again. Guy squeezed his hands into fists and took deliberately slow breaths. You’ve been through this house too often to imagine you’re not alone. Just go back to sleep.
The dead tree’s branches scrabbled against the stones somewhere below Guy’s window. A night animal shrieked. The swing’s ropes groaned with aching perseverance. Guy forced his eyes closed and narrowed his attention to the air moving through his lungs.
“Softly—quietly—”
He sat up. The words had been faint, as though echoed through a tunnel, but they were unmistakable. His throat tightened.
A door shifted open. The sound stretched out far longer than it should have, fraying Guy’s nerves and spiking his heart rate.
His mind warred for a moment. He’d already wasted one night chasing his imagination through the building, and he didn’t want a repeat. On the other hand… What if this time is genuine?
The branches continued to scrabble. A gust of wind knocked something over—perhaps one of the tools he’d left in the family room—and it hit the floor with a bang. Guy tried to swallow, but his mouth felt like a desert.
The tension was viciously unrelenting, threatening to make his heart explode. Against his better judgement, he crawled out of his bed and blindly searched for the crowbar he’d left on the table. He hadn’t thought to bring the torch up with him that night, but he didn’t want to
waste time lighting the gas lamp. Instead, he clenched his fist around the metal, crept to the door, twisted the handle as softly as he could, and peered down the hallway.
Moonlight came through the doors he’d left open. It painted bands of washed-out blue light across the hallway runner and wallpaper, playing tricks with Guy’s vision. He hesitated in the doorway a moment and strained his ears.
Whispers floated through the house. Guy struggled to latch on to the words, but it was like listening to static. The only thing he could tell was that they came from the lower floor. He flexed his grip on the crowbar and started along the hallway, staying close to the walls and rolling his bare feet to minimise the noise.
A windowpane rattled, making Guy flinch. He peered into the room—the girl’s bedroom—and felt an ache start deep in his chest as he watched the curtains roll in the wind. They looked too much like a living figure dancing in the wind.
The whispers had fallen quiet, but his ears still strained to hear them amongst the house’s natural noises. He followed the hallway’s bend. Moonlight glinted off the top of the staircase’s railing. Guy fixed his eyes on it as he slipped forward, his inhalations shallow and body hunched.
A strange, unnerving tingle crawled along his spine. He felt as though he were being followed—and closely. The presence lurked barely a pace behind him, so close that he should be able to feel its breath on his bare skin, its fingers hovering just above his shoulder. A drop of perspiration rolled down the back of his neck. He couldn’t draw air. He wanted to turn—to confront the sudden terror that had gripped him—but the insane part of his mind screamed for him to keep his focus ahead. As long as he didn’t look, it might not be real. As long as he didn’t turn around, he wouldn’t have to confront it.
The Haunting of Rookward House Page 7