Guy ended up clinging to the tiles, panting and grinning. The drop just a foot away was dizzying, but he tried not to look at it or think about how he would get down. All he cared about was being high enough to get reception. He clambered closer to the roof’s peak, using the occasional gaps in the tiles for leverage, then took the phone out once he reached its top.
There was a bar. It didn’t disappear. Guy’s fingers shook as he dialled his mother’s number.
Something moved below him, inside the attic. Guy glanced at the tiles under his feet. He was just above one of the holes in the ceiling, and his foot was propped in it for support. Insulating foam hid the attic from view. He lifted the phone to his ear. It rang once. The scraping sound coming from below was growing closer. Guy shifted back. The opening in the tiles wasn’t large enough for a person to fit through, but he still didn’t feel comfortable being so close to it.
The phone rang a second time. Guy’s fingers shook as he clutched the mobile with both hands. Then there was a click as someone picked up in the middle of the third ring.
A long, pale arm shot out of the ceiling’s hole. Guy gasped and tried to jerk away from it. The blood-tinted fingers snatched at his leg and fixed on his shoe.
“Hello?” Heather said.
Guy opened his mouth, either to speak or scream, he wasn’t sure. He didn’t have the chance to do either. The arm yanked him down the roof, pulling his balance out from under him. His arms pinwheeled as he tried to find purchase, and the damp phone slipped out of his fingers like a bar of soap. He watched it clatter over the tiles, towards the edge of the roof, and disappear over. Then the bloodied hand released him, and he was following the phone, spinning out of control, his fingers being scraped raw as he fought for purchase.
He caught himself on the edge of the roof, his weight bearing down on the gutter. It squealed then jolted him as its bolts came loose. Guy desperately tried to claw his way back onto the tiles. They were too slippery. The gutter collapsed entirely, and he didn’t even have time to gasp as he plunged over the edge.
Guy didn’t remember hitting the ground. When he opened his eyes, the sky was above him and a clot of thick vines was below. His vision blurred, and his limbs felt as if they were made of stone, heavy and inflexible. Rain pinged off his face, but he barely felt it. A strange noise wormed its way into his ears. It sounded like sirens.
* * *
“Guy?” Dr. Holmes leaned forward in her chair.
Guy startled. He hadn’t realised he’d fallen into a daze. “Sorry—”
“It’s fine.” Her smile was warm. Encouraging. It created tiny crow’s feet around her eyes as she nudged her glasses up her long nose and examined her notes. “We’re making good progress. So you remember falling off Rookward’s roof. Do you recall what happened after then?”
He stared at her, his mind blank. The office was painted in soft, earthy colours, and the wooden bookshelves and ferns created a comforting environment. They weren’t helping to soothe the prickling unease in Guy’s stomach, though.
“Guy…” She shifted in her leather seat, seeming to choose her words carefully. “Do you remember waking up in hospital? The police interviews? Your mother’s death?”
“What?” His chest constricted. He tried to stand, but Dr. Holmes held out a hand to calm him.
“It’s all right, Guy. I’m here to help. Take a slow breath. You’re going to be fine.”
“My mother…” The words caught on his tongue. “She’s not—she isn’t—”
“You were in a coma for two months. The fall damaged a part of your brain responsible for your memories. It’s a form of anterograde amnesia. It’s like it’s locked you into a point in time. You periodically drift back to that last day at Rookward and lose any memories subsequent to the accident.” Dr. Holmes folded her hands over the sheaf of case notes. It was at least an inch thick. “Don’t be alarmed. They’ll return, slowly.”
Guy blinked at the room. It was like seeing it for the first time. But a small voice in the back of his mind insisted the watercolour paintings, tubs of plants, and large bucket chairs were familiar. He swallowed. “I’ve been here before, haven’t I?”
She smiled. “Yes, Guy. Many times. I’m your psychiatrist.”
“Why am I seeing you?” He squeezed his hands in his lap. “Is it just because I’m missing memories? I don’t have money—”
“It’s all right. You don’t need to pay for these sessions. They’re court mandated.”
“Oh.” Flashes of memories flitted into Guy’s mind. He tried to seize them, but they darted away before he could get a good look. He was afraid to ask the next question. “Why?”
Dr. Holmes hesitated. A deep, horrible dread built in his chest. He couldn’t meet her eyes. “What did I do?”
“You killed a girl named Tiffany Price.” Dr. Holmes clasped her hands together. Her gaze was sincere, but Guy still couldn’t meet it. “The court concluded that you weren’t of sound mind when you did it, and you required mental rehabilitation rather than incarceration.”
“No.” His mouth was hellishly dry. Dr. Holmes had put a glass of water on the small coffee table between them, but he didn’t have enough control over his hands to pick it up. “I-I didn’t kill her. A tree fell on her. During the storm—”
“Guy, that’s a false memory. It’s a part of your psychosis. You were under an immense amount of stress when she visited you at Rookward, and when she visited you late one night, you mistook her for one of the phantoms you’d begun to imagine lived around you. She died before you realised what was happening. So you carried her outside, placed her next to a fallen tree, and your mind built a complex series of events to explain her death.”
Guy stared. His pulse rushed in his ears, and his world became very small. “No. Please, that’s not what happened. I didn’t hurt her! I wouldn’t—”
But the memories were bubbling up like toxic ichor from the bottom of a lake. Guy saw himself bringing down his crowbar again and again, fear and frantic anger taking hold of his limbs until the girl’s head was a pulp of crushed bones and gore.
He dug his fingers into his hair, pulling hard enough to hurt, as a horrified, miserable wail rose inside of him. He’d thrown away her car keys. He’d written the note that he would later discover tucked into her pocket. He’d faked her death.
“It’s all right, Guy. Take a breath. Ground yourself.” Dr. Holmes waited until Guy lowered his shaking fingers.
He felt hopelessly, helplessly lost. Dr. Holmes leaned close, scanning his features, and eventually continued in a softer voice. “You can’t blame yourself for what happened to Tiffany Price. You never intended to hurt anyone. This is something we’ve been working on—learning how to forgive yourself for your past. Not just Miss Price’s death, but also Savannah’s.”
Guy snapped his head up to meet Dr. Holmes’s dark eyes. Dread churned in his stomach. “Please, I can’t have hurt Savannah—”
She continued in a softer voice. “Your psychosis began on the day you hit Savannah, killing her and her unborn child. The grief and horror was too great for you to cope with, so your mind constructed an alternative world—one where Savannah and her child lived but simply didn’t want to see you again. I’m not telling you this to hurt you, Guy. I’m here to help. And the first steps to recovery are facing your reality, no matter how painful.”
“No.” Guy tried to squeeze his eyes shut against the memory, but nothing could keep it out. As Dr. Holmes’s words washed over him, he heard the thud then the crunch as the pickup truck hit Savannah. He remembered leaping out, screaming in terror and horror, and trying to pull her free. There was so much blood…
“You’re going to be all right, Guy.” Dr. Holmes pulled her chair closer to his. Her eyes traced over his face, and her lips tightened in concern. “I’ll be here to help you. For as long as you need.”
Guy dropped his head into his hands. Desperate, plaintive sobs wrenched their way out of his chest. He almost
wished he were back at Rookward, trapped in the fantasy he’d built; at least there, he wasn’t a murderer. At least there, Savannah and his baby daughter were still alive, even if he never saw them. His mother was waiting for him to come home. He had hope. A future.
“I don’t want to live like this,” he whispered. “Not when I’ve lost everything.”
“It feels that way right now, but it’s not the truth.” She bent closer. “You can survive this. You’re strong; you can go on to have a happy, satisfying life. You may even find love again.”
Dr. Holmes’s hand rested on his knee. The long fingers rubbed at his jeans. He glanced up.
She was familiar—even more familiar than the office. Her dark eyes and high cheekbones reminded him of someone. He was sure…
“This isn’t right.” Guy stood. Dizziness washed through him. The office was distorting in tiny ways. The potted vines were identical, like photocopies. He stumbled towards the nearest bookcase, but none of the volumes had any titles on their spines.
“You need to calm down, Thomas.” Dr. Holmes folded her hands over her long legs. The psychiatrist Guy had visited for his anger wore loose pants and a simple, modest top and jacket. But Dr. Holmes was dressed in a skirt and had her dark hair up in a style that appeared more suited to the sixties.
“This isn’t real,” Guy said, and the room dissolved. The houseplants morphed into dark, twisted vines. The coffee table became the old black-and-white TV, its screen still smashed from when he’d thrown it out the window. And the bucket chair he’d been lounging in was the bloodstained couch.
Guy stepped back. He was in Rookward’s family room, and Amy was nowhere to be seen.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Guy choked on his hysterical cry. He doubled over, his hands gripping his hair, as his mind spun.
How did I get here? Did she move me while I was unconscious? He turned towards the window. Tiff’s car was barely visible near the edge of the forest, where early-afternoon light glinted off the metal. She wanted me to think I was insane. Why? So that I would trust her?
It had worked, Guy was ashamed to admit. For the brief moments he’d spoken with Amy, he’d believed her every word. She hadn’t just distorted his vision, but planted conviction in his mind, as well. She’d made him relive the day he’d hit Savannah… except in her twisted reality, blood had splattered across the scene. The horror clenched his stomach.
But Savannah isn’t dead. I remember staring at her across the courtroom and bumping into her that day at the library. But for that moment, Amy made me really believe I’d killed her.
And Tiff, too. She convinced me I was to blame. He pictured the phantom memory again—the crowbar rising and falling, spraying up chunks of bone—and retched. He leaned against the wall, shaking and clammy.
She tried to take everything from me—not just Savannah, but also my mother, my freedom, and my sanity. If I hadn’t recognised her, how long would she have kept me there? Days? Months? The rest of my life?
The illusion hadn’t been perfect, though. She had created a bookcase but didn’t know any titles to put on it. The plants were imperfect. None of the room’s details had been very clear, even when he’d looked at them closely. And she’d only known how to dress from the era when she’d been alive.
He rubbed at his goose-bumped arms. The illusion had felt real enough to bring tears to his eyes. He started to go back to the dining room, and that was when he became aware of the pain.
His leg—the same leg with the cuts—now ached right up to the hipbone. When he pressed on it, the flesh was sensitive. Guy limped to the dining room and pulled a small mirror out of the pack of toiletries. It was too small to show more than flashes of his person, but what it revealed wasn’t great. Blood was smeared from his hairline and ran down one cheek. Leaves and fragments of organic matter had collected in his hair. And bruises were already starting to form on his cheek, arm, and undoubtedly his leg.
It could be worse. Guy put away the mirror. That fall could have killed him. He was probably alive thanks to those hellish vines he’d landed on.
Sighing, he let his head dip, then a thought occurred to him. He patted his pockets, but of course, the phone wasn’t in them. It had tumbled over the roof’s edge before he fell.
“Damn, damn, damn.” He hopped through the house’s back door. The drizzling rain hadn’t abated, but he was already so wet that it didn’t make much of a difference. Guy moved around the house’s outside as quickly as his leg would let him, then he stopped under the part of the roof he’d fallen from. The gutter dangled above him. One side was still attached, and the metal squealed as the wind made it swing. Guy fell to his knees and began scrambling through the flattened vegetation where he’d landed.
“C’mon, where are you?” Thorns pricked his fingers, but he ignored them as he dug loose clumps of the vine away and shook them out.
A metallic glint caught his eye. Guy gasped and grabbed for it. He lifted the precious phone to examine it in the light.
The crack on the screen had extended across the entire face, and it was dripping water. Guy pressed the power button, then his heart plunged when it didn’t respond.
Did I crush it? Did it run out of power? Or did the water kill it?
Unable to stand giving up on his only hope of contacting the outside world, he clutched the phone close to his chest as he hopped back into the kitchen. He found a bag of rice he’d brought in one of the crates, tore it open with his teeth, and poured it into a saucepan. He buried the phone inside. If rain was responsible for killing the phone, the rice would absorb some of it… he hoped.
Guy rubbed water off the tip of his nose. Sickening exhaustion combined with the multitude of aches to make him wish he could just curl into a ball on the ground and give up. He thought of his mother. He pictured what his death would do to her, imagined her having to arrange his funeral and stand at the graveside alone. No one from the town would rally around her to bury the man they despised. He was all she had, in the same way she was all he had.
A new idea occurred him, and it made Guy’s limbs turn cold. Heather had answered the phone just as Amy attacked. She wouldn’t have recognised Tiff’s number and might assume it was a prank call. But she was also a worrier and had been anxious about Guy’s stay at Rookward—with good cause, as it turned out. How much of the struggle did she hear? Would a call from a foreign number be enough to alarm her? Is there any chance she would to drive out here to check on me?
Fear made his palms clammy. Amy seemed obsessed with removing other women from Guy’s life, and Tiff’s death had been violent and merciless. He didn’t want to imagine what the spectre would do to Heather if she tried to enter Rookward’s grounds.
I need to get back to her. Guy rolled his shoulders and tried to ignore the pain. There’s got to be a way out of here. Something I haven’t thought of yet.
He moved to the window and stared at where the driveway disappeared into the trees. He could try walking out again, but he knew the chance that it would turn out better than the last time was laughably small. In fact, he suspected it would turn out much worse; he didn’t think he had the energy to walk for an entire day again.
Finding Tiff’s keys would be like looking for a needle in a haystack, except he didn’t know where the haystack was. And if he found them, there was always the risk Amy had sabotaged the car just like she had with his. He could hope the phone could be revived, but he couldn’t afford to put his trust in it.
His truck was worth another try. He still didn’t know what was wrong with it, but if he could find the problem, it might be possible to raid Tiff’s car for parts.
Amy’s what’s wrong with it. Guy snorted and rubbed at the corners of his eyes. He didn’t have high hopes for saving his beloved pickup.
But there wasn’t any other way to escape Rookward. Unless… Guy’s head snapped up. While hiking through the forest, he’d passed a river shortly before arriving back at the house. He could construct a r
aft and escape along it.
Amy might be able to distort what he could see. She could turn him around in the forest, lead him back home, and even convince his mind he was in a therapist’s office. But there wasn’t much she could do to a river. Once Guy was on it, the current could only carry him one direction—away from Rookward.
Hope gave him energy. He yanked open the crate of depleted supplies. He’d used all of the duct tape on the upstairs attic blockade, but he still had string, nails, and screws. He collected them into a crate, along with hammers and saws, and dragged them outside. The clouds obscured most of the sun, but he guessed the day was progressing towards late afternoon. He still had some hours of daylight left.
Chills had set in to Guy’s limbs. He clenched his teeth and squinted against the rain as he turned towards the patch of forest he thought led to the water.
It wasn’t a long walk. The ground began to slope downhill, then Guy picked up on the telltale rushing, bubbling noises. He stepped out from behind a curtain of lichen and found himself on the river’s shore, not far from the trunk he’d crawled along to reach Rookward.
Guy dropped his supplies and scanned the area. There was plenty of wood to build a raft. The only thing he was missing was know-how. Before coming to Rookward, he’d watched a plethora of tutorial videos for sealing floors, painting, repairing broken windows, and patching roofs, but he’d never considered he might need to construct an emergency escape raft.
It doesn’t have to sail across the ocean. Guy took the saw out and began cutting branches off a nearby tree. It just has to get me far enough away from Rookward that Amy can’t follow.
That posed another question: how far could she travel? He was certain she’d stalked him through the woods. Is it possible she’s latched on to me, rather than the house, and I’ll never be free from her?
It was a chilling thought, but Guy tried to dismiss it. Dwelling on future possibilities wouldn’t help; he just had to focus on his immediate task and deal with whatever came next when it arrived.
The Haunting of Rookward House Page 17