The chair Guy had initially stood on to reach the trapdoor waited beside him. He dragged it directly under the opening then arranged the wooden planks around it to form a tepee shape. He shuffled the boards in so that their tops converged neatly in the centre of the trapdoor.
Something scrabbled at the wood above him, and the planks shuddered downwards. Guy had a split second to choose between running and standing his ground. His first impulse was to move back, but then he imagined lying awake at night, knowing Amy could be anywhere in the house, maybe as close as the next room, maybe watching him sleep. He grabbed the planks, shoving them back into place and bracing them the best he could with one hand. Then he reached into his pocket for the tape.
The trapdoor shifted down with a harsh scrape. Guy caught a glimpse of pale skin and staring eyes before he forced the planks back. The trapdoor banged closed again, and Guy gripped the loose end of the duct tape between his teeth and yanked a length free. He wound it around the planks, his fear pushing him to move too quickly and leave slack in the tape.
The creature banged on the trapdoor again. A grunt escaped Guy as he fought to keep his supports against the door. He kept winding, and gradually, his loops became tighter and straighter. He released his grip on the planks to crouch down and bind the wood to the chair. By the time the tape ran out, he had what he hoped was an inflexible structure. He stepped back, panting, and stared at the trapdoor.
Whatever waited above didn’t try to escape again. Guy swallowed and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. He shook his tepee structure. It barely shifted an inch. There would be no way to remove it without cutting the tape, and it blocked the only way out of the attic—he hoped.
Guy’s legs were shaking, and fresh pain stung the cut ankle. He limped into the bedroom and grabbed his sleeping bag and blankets off the ground. His initial plan had been to collect the bedding and get out as soon as he could, but he couldn’t stop himself from glancing towards the ceiling.
It took a moment of hunting, but Guy located the tiny black hole above the desk. He was faintly surprised he hadn’t seen it while staring at the ceiling during his sleepless nights—but he supposed he hadn’t been searching for it then.
Guy threw the blanket over his shoulder and bundled the sleeping bag under one arm as he moved into the hallway and shuffled towards the stairs. Even with the supports in place, he didn’t feel completely safe turning his back on the trapdoor.
This is enough, isn’t it? I should be safe for tonight, shouldn’t I?
He reached the hallway’s corner and paused, one hand on the flaking wallpaper, to watch the brace and trapdoor. He hated not having any answers to his questions.
The holes in the roof tiles aren’t large enough for a human to fit through, and I didn’t see any other doors in the attic.
But then, I don’t know the house like Amy does.
He’d been worrying at his lip, and the chapped skin ached. Guy dug his nails into the paper until it crinkled, then he limped towards the stairs.
This has to be enough. Because I don’t know what I’ll do if it’s not.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Guy sat at the table until well after midnight. He was exhausted, but his nerves wouldn’t let him sleep. He couldn’t stop his mind from scanning through the building and searching for ways the creature could escape from the attic. He’d done the best he could to secure the plank-and-chair structure but couldn’t disperse the niggling worries that Amy was stronger or more cunning than he’d given her credit for.
He poured the last of the brandy into a glass and sipped it. There wasn’t enough left to get him drunk, but he hoped it would help steady the shaking in his limbs and the throbbing in his chest.
The storm rolled in a little after eleven. He saw it before he heard it; lightning flashed through the windows, painting weird shadows over the wall and making Guy flinch. Thunder followed. It shook the air, and Guy squeezed his eyes shut as though that could block it out.
Rain came not long after. It was heavy and harsh as it came down in thick drops, but the drumming noise actually helped to soothe Guy. He sat for a while, keeping his mind empty as he watched the drips trail down the window, then he rose and shut the door to the foyer. He’d left it open to help him hear the noises from deeper in the house, but Amy had remained silent. He propped a chair under the handle, hoped it would be secure, then moved into the kitchen and towards his bed.
Guy lined up both the hammer and crowbar within easy reach then put the lamp, still lit, on the ground where it would illuminate most of the room. He shuffled into the sleeping bag but left it unzipped in case he needed to race for the door.
The pain in his leg had dulled to a soft ache, and the blankets felt warm. Guy held onto his pillow as he watched the intermittent lightning brighten the kitchen’s window. He only counted three flashes before he was asleep.
* * *
Thomas couldn’t breathe. Blood stained his fingers; the sticky texture felt as though it might never leave him. He stumbled through his house as he tried to call for his children. Becca. Dan. Georgie. The words came out as hoarse gasps, so faint that even he couldn’t hear them above his pounding pulse.
He saw Louise’s face every time he blinked. Her dead, staring eyes. Her lips, drained pale. The way her head had drooped when he’d shaken her—
“Dan!” He started up the stairs. “Becca!”
Amy had gotten into the house. He didn’t know how—not when they’d taken so many precautions and always locked the doors—but she’d managed it. She was an infestation, a rot that had set in and would never leave. His legs were weak, but desperation and fear spurred him up the stairs to the second floor.
The baby monitor played muffled sounds in his bedroom. A woman crooned a lullaby; Thomas recognised the tune he sang to his children every night. His throat was too tight to allow breathing. Spots of terror-induced white burst across his vision as he pushed on the door to the children’s room.
Amy leaned on the edge of the crib as she sang into it. Blood glistened in her hair, dripped down her face, and even discoloured her teeth as she turned her smile towards him.
Small figures lay in the beds. They didn’t move. Thomas’s strength gave out, and he crumpled to his knees. “No—not my children—please—”
“Shh.” She pushed away from the crib and swung her hips as she waltzed towards him. “It had to be done, dear one. They were distracting you from us.”
Thomas couldn’t tear his gaze away from Dan’s hand, hanging limply off the edge of the bed. Red liquid dripped off the fingertip. A sickened whine rose in Thomas as his vision blurred.
“Thomas, Thomas, shh.” She knelt in front of him, pressing bloodied hands to his cheeks as she tried to pull his attention back to herself. “I’m here for you. I’ve always been here for you.”
“Don’t touch me.” Thomas was disgusted to hear the words come out as a moan. He tried to twist out of Amy’s grip and reached towards his children. “Don’t touch me. I need to—my children—”
Amy’s smile twitched. Her grip tightened, keeping him immobilised. She tilted her head to one side, and her wild black hair fell across one eye. “They’re gone, but I’m here, my darling. I love you. We can be together now. This is what we always wanted, wasn’t it? It’s what you promised me back then. Don’t you remember?”
He remembered. The too-warm afternoons where she’d slipped into his office and they’d locked the door. The sweetest kisses. The feel of her flesh against his. The promises she’d wrung from him—promises to leave his wife, to choose her over his family.
And he also remembered the way she’d grown twisted as soon as he tried to stop the affair. The illicit honey was sweet, but it came with a price too high for any sane man to pay.
“You repulse me.”
Her smile was falling, and it spurred Thomas to add venom to his words.
“You were a toy. Easy to manipulate. Easy to lie to. I never would have given up
Louise, not for you. You’re deluded if you think I ever cared for you.”
Amy’s face twisted into grimacing anger. A sharp pain burst through Thomas’s chest. He looked down; their kitchen knife dug deep into his stomach.
“Mine.” A string of spittle fell from Amy’s bared teeth. She pulled the blade out and returned it home with each repetition of the word. “Mine. Mine. Mine. Mine.”
Thomas tried to speak. Blood flooded his tongue and dribbled over his lips. He scrabbled for purchase, and his fingers grasped at Amy’s shoulders and neck. The anger in her face softened as she leaned closer, her words slowing into a soft lullaby. “Mine. You’re mine. Mine.”
She kissed him. Blood ran between their lips. Darkness swirled across the edges of Thomas’s vision. He felt cold. So horribly, achingly cold…
* * *
Guy snapped awake. He was blind, but his breaths were sawing rasps in his ears. He clutched at his chest and stomach, afraid of finding the punctures he’d felt in the dream, but his body was still whole.
No moonlight made it through the clouds. Guy held his hand above his head, but he couldn’t see the fingers. His lamp had gone out—probably from lack of fuel. He felt as though he’d slept for a long while, but no sign of morning cut through the abysmal black outside.
A deep, permeating foreboding soaked through Guy. He rolled onto his side and wrapped his arms around his chest. You’re safe. She’s trapped in the attic. She can’t get out.
A floorboard creaked near the opposite side of the room, below the window. Guy twisted towards it, but the world was black. He thought about searching for the lamp, but even if he found it, the fuel would be nearly impossible to identify by feel in the boxes of supplies. It was just the house flexing. That’s all.
Rain continued to drum at the windows and the walls. Guy couldn’t stop his ears from searching for human sounds through the drone any more than he could stop himself from hunting for shapes in the black. He was desperate for morning, but it felt as though it might never come.
As the seconds morphed into minutes, Guy slid back into sleep. Uneasy dreams tugged on the edges of his awareness. He imagined a light moved past the window, illuminating the staring eyes just inches from his face, but the image faded before he even had a chance to feel fear. Thunder rumbled, so close that it seemed to shake the building’s foundations.
When Guy woke, the storm had finally calmed and morning’s light brightened the edges of the sky. He rolled onto his back and blinked at the ceiling. Ghastly tiredness dogged him, but he didn’t want to stay inside the building any longer than he had to. He pressed his palms into his eye sockets and braced himself to get up.
The air was bitingly cold without the blankets around him, and Guy shuffled into the dining room to bundle himself in layers from the crate of spare clothes. His foot was stiff and aching, and sharp pains radiated towards his knee with every step. He blew on his hands then went to start the portable cooker to boil the last of his water. If he was going to hike back to civilisation, he would need all the caffeine he could get.
With the pot on the stove, Guy hopped back towards the kitchen. The light was insipid and hard to see by, but the rain had cleaned some of the grime off the windows. Guy glanced towards his bed and froze.
He hadn’t seen them in the dim light while waking, but white marks spread across the walls and floor around where he’d slept. He scanned the doorway; the flour he’d laid down was scuffed in a wide arc. Don’t panic. You walked through it yourself multiple times.
Guy swallowed as his eyes drifted higher. The white marks spread over the walls and onto the ceiling. His heart turned cold. She wasn’t trapped after all. How long did she spend watching me sleep?
His attention shifted towards the window. A tree had come down during the storm. Guy rubbed his hand over his chilled nose as he shuffled to the window. The huge oak with the swing had fallen; he could see the wooden board lying beside the felled boughs, the ropes limp and tangled in the overgrown lawn. Guy was surprised to feel a twinge of remorse. The creaks had tormented him, but the tree had been magnificent, and he imagined the swing had been loved at one time. The yard felt sadder and lonelier without it.
Something metallic glinted a little past it, near the forest’s edge. Guy frowned and leaned closer to the glass. The shape looked like a car.
That’s not possible. Is it? Has someone really come to Rookward? Why didn’t I hear them?
He passed through the kitchen door as quickly as his bad leg would let him. The clouds were breaking apart. Guy inhaled as golden sunlight hit his face; just being out of Rookward’s encasement felt like breathing properly for the first time. And yet, the sense of dread that had dogged him through the previous night remained. He rubbed at the prickles creeping over his arms as he waded through the weeds towards the car.
As he neared the vehicle, recognition hit Guy. It was the same sedan the teens had driven. The car was old and worn, but details like the clean windows and new seat covers showed it was cared for. Guy came to a stop at the driver’s side and peered through the glass. A purse lay on the passenger seat, but otherwise, the sedan was empty.
“Tiff?” Guy stepped back and faced the house. He scanned the windows, but the only light in the building came from the stovetop in the dining room. He raised his voice into a bellow. “Tiff!”
I thought I dreamed about light coming through the window. It must have been her car headlights. Why would she drive out here in the middle of the night? And where did she go? The only way into the house is through the kitchen, and she would have had to physically step over me to get past.
Guy chewed on his lip, staring across the yard. His attention was pulled towards the tree that lay there like a fallen giant, its massive, knotted roots torn from the ground in an explosion of dirt. Something colourful rested under the trunk. The prickles of disquiet that had bothered Guy through the morning turned into a painful, terrifying buzz.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Tiff!” Guy ran, ignoring the pain in his leg. The patches of loosened dirt made him stumble as he rounded the exposed roots to reach the trunk. His vision blurred as though his brain refused to accept what the eyes were capturing. Flashes of a pink cardigan and blue jeans mixed in with flesh-coloured tones. Soaked into them was a deep, dark red.
Guy stopped a few paces away from the girl and dropped to his knees. The image was so unnatural that Guy had to blink and look a second time to make sense of what he was seeing.
Everything above Tiff’s waist had been crushed under the tree’s trunk. She was face down, her legs twisted at an awkward angle, one sneaker half off her foot. The weight of the tree must have been immense; the trunk lay flush with the ground, and Guy knew there wouldn’t be much of Tiff’s torso and head left even if he managed to lift the oak off her. One of her arms poked free, its bloodless fingers curled towards the sky. Guy reflexively reached out to hold it. The skin was ice cold and damp from the rain. A miserable, wailing cry choked in his throat.
This can’t be real. She’s not dead. It’s got to be a joke—a prank—
“Blake!” Guy swung away from the tree to scan the yard and the house. A circling bird’s mournful cry answered him.
He slumped back and pressed his hand against his face. Nausea rose, but there was nothing in his stomach to bring up. Instead, tears flowed.
Guy sat next to Tiff’s body for a long time. Rain drizzled over him, freezing him. He kept his fingers around her hand. The skin gradually warmed where he held it until it was only a few degrees lower than his own temperature. Guy kept waiting for the fingers to move, to squeeze him back, to reassure him that he’d misunderstood and everything was really all right. They stayed stiff and unresponsive.
Leaving the girl seemed ruthless and insulting. But as the sun moved higher and shifted the angle of the shadows around him, Guy was forced to pay attention to reality. Thoughts came back like scattered fragments of a shredded book, and he slowly pieced them together.<
br />
She brought a car. I can leave. Bring the police back, get them to help me move the tree off her—
He stumbled to his feet and limped to the sedan. It was parked not too far from the tree. He could picture Tiff battling her way across the yard during the storm and not even hearing the crackle as the roots were torn out of the ground.
This wasn’t a coincidence. He reached the car and tried the handle. It was unlocked. That creature—Amy—she did this.
He moved into the driver’s seat. Sitting in the dead girl’s car, claiming the same spot she must have taken hundreds of times, made uneasy prickles crawl over his back, but he couldn’t pass up the chance of escape.
The keys weren’t in the ignition. Guy picked up the purple satchel bag on the passenger seat and opened it. The bag was cluttered with receipts, ChapSticks, pens, tissue packs, and a folded-up gossip magazine. He emptied it and went through every pocket carefully, but the keys weren’t there, either.
A moan built in Guy’s chest. There was only one other place they could be, but the idea of raiding the dead girl’s body was enough to make his hands shake.
Do it now, before you lose your nerve. He jumped out of the car and flinched as the impact jarred his foot. He returned to the fallen tree, mouth dry and heart aching.
“I’m sorry.” She couldn’t hear him, but speaking helped assuage the guilt as he knelt at Tiff’s side. “You didn’t deserve this. I’m so, so sorry.”
Her clothes were still wet from being soaked in the storm. Guy tweaked the edge of her cardigan up to expose the jeans’ pockets. Something white poked out of one. Guy tried to pull it free but felt the slight give of damp paper tearing. He left it and instead felt around her other pocket. It was empty.
“Where did you put your keys?” Guy frowned and tried to peer under the tree to check if she had any pockets in the cardigan. He couldn’t see her upper half at all, just a collage of fabric, blood, and fractured white bones. He pulled back, the sickening image making his stomach lurch, and cold sweat spread over his body. Her cardigan material was knit, and he was fairly sure it wouldn’t have embellishments or pockets. Guy sagged back onto his heels. “They’ve got to be somewhere.”
The Haunting of Rookward House Page 14