An Inquiry Into Love and Death (12 page)

At the top of the window—the very top—a hand was pressed to the glass.

The hand was reaching
down
—from God knew where—and flattened to the glass. It was grayish white, damp. The pads of its fingers were rotted black. I glimpsed blackened fingernails and a ripped, ruined thumbnail. As we watched, the hand pressed harder into the window glass—as if being used to launch the body—and disappeared. It left behind no mark.

“Drew,” I said.
“It’s climbing up the wall.”

We heard the sounds move upward over the side of the house. Somewhere around the roof they stopped, and all was silence.

Both of us rasped ragged breaths into the darkness. The shutter dangled. The garden was quiet. The trees beyond the garden were leafy and still. The gate did not move, and the wind did not blow. From the top of the house to the bottom, there was now absolute quiet, as if none of it had happened.

Drew sounded as if he had just run a sprint. He stood tensed, looking at the ceiling, as if expecting to see something there. “What,” he said finally, “what
the fuck
was that?”

“It’s gone up,” I said, ignoring the profanity. “Only up.” I bit my lip. “It hasn’t come down.”

He swore again, creatively and shockingly, and I had to remember he’d been in the army. “Did it do this last night?”

“No—not exactly.” I couldn’t help adding, “I
told
you.”

He didn’t acknowledge this, but only looked down at his torch. “And how the hell did this come down the stairs? It wasn’t that thing on your roof. What was it?”

“I don’t know.” My voice quavered. “I didn’t know there was any—anything—in here. In the house.”

“I’m going out.” He looked at me, and with the light of both the fire and the torch I could see him now, his chiseled face like a charcoal sketch. “I have to go out there. You know that, don’t you?”

I was shaking my head. “Please don’t. That’s what it
wants
.”

“Jillian. I’m not just going to go to bed now and have sweet dreams. I’m going out there to take a look. Maybe I’ll draw that thing off the roof while I’m at it.”

“And then what?” I cried.

“I’ll deal with that when I come to it.” He shook his head. “A ghost. For God’s sake, a ghost. I came here because a man fell off a cliff, and now I have a bloody ghost. Why wasn’t a murder enough to deal with?”

I followed him to the kitchen door, still pleading. “Drew, please. Please don’t.” In the extremity of my terror, it was the only thing I could manage.

But he was unmoved. He was an RAF pilot, and when men like him saw danger they walked toward it, not away. “I’ll be right back.”

“You won’t. Please don’t go. Please!”

He stopped before the kitchen door. For a second I thought he was hesitating, but I knew better. He merely squared his shoulders.

Then, in a single movement, he turned to me, tilted my head up to his, and kissed me fiercely.

“I’ll be right back,” he said again. Then he opened the door and went out into the night.

I
watched him through the library window, past the broken shutter. He studied the smashed flowerpot and the cobbles, the light of his torch moving to and fro. Then he moved to the back gate and swiveled it, examining the hinges. He stood there for what seemed like ages, as my nails dug into my palms, but no sound came from the roof—or from anywhere.

Come back, come back. . . .

Drew straightened, as if hearing something; he turned in the direction of the woods, his torch down by his side. He froze for a long moment. Then, as I watched in horror, he switched off the torch, moved through the gate, and disappeared among the trees.

I shouted, but there was no answer. I had no idea what to do. He’d told me to stay; perhaps he’d just gone a short way into the woods. Perhaps he’d be back directly, and all I had to do was wait.

I couldn’t look through the window anymore—the memory of that sickening hand kept coming back, and I had no desire to see anything lower itself back down—so I went to the kitchen. I couldn’t make tea. I couldn’t even pace. I sat at the kitchen table, staring at nothing, and waited.

Nothing moved in the house. Whatever had teased us with the torches had disappeared or was quiet; still, I couldn’t bear to leave the kitchen table to find a lamp and light it. And so I sat.

After an hour, I had to admit Drew wasn’t coming back. I had a very large problem—whether to wait, or whether to go out after him. I pressed my hands to my face and rubbed my eyes with my fingertips. That thing was hunting me—it wanted something of me, just as it had wanted something of Toby. It was trying to lure me outside; it had already succeeded with Drew. To go out there could well be the last piece of foolishness I would ever perform.

I thought of the way Drew had straightened, listening, then walked away. What better way to lure me outside than to draw Drew where I would follow? To use him as bait? It was a hunter’s trick, was it not?

Mischievous, and a little hostile.

Still, I stood. I wanted my coat, but there was no way I was going to feel my way through the dark to the front hall to find it. I had no time to lose, anyway. The seconds were going by. My dress and shoes would have to do.

I closed my eyes. I would have to be quick and quiet. I would have to be aware. I would have to be clever. I opened the kitchen door.

The night was chilled and crisp, the air clear, as if everything were etched in ink. I ran lightly across the cobbles and out the opened gate, taking the path that Drew had taken, by my nearest guess. I had no idea which direction he had gone once he left my sight, but I kept going as the trees got thicker and thicker, roughly the same way William Moorcock had taken me on our walk. I heard no sound behind me.

After a moment, I could do nothing but stop and get my bearings, silently catching my breath. Barrow House was behind me, past the dark edge of the trees; beyond it was the steep descent to Rothewell. To my left, the woods skirting the cliff made the descent toward Blood Moon Bay—the tangled, impenetrable green I’d seen from the vantage point William had shown me. I plunged ahead.

Far to my left, a light came as a pinpoint through the trees. It waxed, as if someone had turned up a wick or opened a lantern gate, and then it waned again.

I stood frozen. After a moment, the light came again, steady, from the same place. So it wasn’t a lantern being carried; it was sitting somewhere, stationary. I remembered William’s words—
a signal house, where John kept his lantern. He’d light it on nights when a ship was due to come in
. That must be it. If Drew had seen it, he would have gone toward it.

But he could not have seen the light all the way from the back garden. I hesitated, wondering what to do.

From far behind me came a furtive sound. It came quietly, through the trees, and was still again. The familiar creak of my back garden gate.

I ran. I plunged headlong through the trees, unheeding of where I was going, just trying to get away. My feet found a narrow path, and I followed it. It rose as I ran, taking me on an incline, and the sound of the crashing sea came louder.

The trees thinned, then vanished. And I stopped.

I was at the crest of the cliff where it thrust up from the sea. Below me, the buildings of Rothewell’s High Street were laid out like children’s toys. The water was vast and dark far below, churning.

This was the place where my uncle had gone over the cliff.

I took a step back. The wind stung my cheeks, pulled my hair. Toby had died here; someone had pushed him. He had gone over the edge, and down, down. . . .

If something had lured Drew to the cliff . . . If he hadn’t been careful—

I backed into the trees again and changed direction. This time I ran toward the light, by some unthinking instinct. The trees thickened around me again, the green world damp with the onset of an English autumn night. I could barely see my own feet, and at first I flailed clumsily, my feet slipping; then I fell into a rhythm, focused on the light through the trees, on my breathing, on not falling. I briefly thought I could have used a torch—but of course, the light would have given me dead away. I thought of Drew, deliberately turning his torch off when he went into the woods.

Now I came to the same clearing William and I had come to in our walk, looking down the slope toward Blood Moon Bay. I couldn’t see the beach in the dark, but I could hear the heavy sound of the water, and I inhaled the salty air down my throat. The light came and went again, more clearly now, set on a promontory where it could be easily seen from the water. I had to find my way around to it without descending to the beach, and I had no bearings in the dark.

I wasted precious minutes fighting my way through a thick patch of bush, then moving up and down, trying to see a way through. There seemed to be no path. I got caught in thorns, had to extricate myself, and made a horrible amount of noise; I paused, gasping. Behind me, a branch cracked—far away, but unmistakable.

I bent, grasped my knees. He was coming. My mind blanked, as a mouse’s must when the shadow of an owl flies overhead. I had no ideas. I had no thoughts. I could only think to run, to hide, and I did not know where.

In the dimness, as I began to sink into helpless panic, I spotted a path. It was cut deep into the earth, the slope crumbling and rocky, and it was going the wrong way, but I took it.

And suddenly, as I moved, I was silent. There must be some buried instinct deep inside the human mind that understands the hunter and the hunted. Mine awoke now, and my mind and body were in perfect tandem, my feet slipping quietly over the gravelly stones of the path, stepping past roots, my legs tireless, my eyes trained on the ground. I slid through the night like a shadow.

The path was taking me down the slope, toward Blood Moon Bay. I had no thought past that, no thought past getting away from the predator behind me. I had made it nearly halfway down the long, steep wooded slope when I heard the crumble of gravel far behind me. So he was at the head of the path, then, and following me down.

Again, my instinct flew. I ducked off the path and jagged sideways into the trees for cover.

This slowed my progress, but this way, he didn’t know which direction I was going, and he would have to find me in the woods. I moved softly from tree to tree, my steps light on the mossy ground. I paused at times, hidden by a particularly large trunk, listening, getting my bearings. I was not in full-out flight now. I was an animal in stealthy retreat, trying to outwit its hunter.

And at each pause, I listened for Drew. A voice, a footstep, a shout—anything. Nothing came.

I found I was making my way, slowly and by zigzag, down toward the water of Blood Moon Bay. The sound of the surf was unmistakable, the sea air becoming thicker. I could get my bearings there, find another way up toward the signal house, and maybe look for a sign of Drew. My pace was slow and steady, silent and clear. There was no way anyone—anything—could track me.

In the end, I got nearly to the bottom.

The trees thinned, and I could now see dim light from the bright, full moon overhead. And I suddenly realized my mistake. If I moved out of my cover, I’d be exposed in the moonlight. There was nowhere else to go.

I stopped and nearly stumbled; I grabbed a nearby branch, and it snapped. Behind me, something began to crash through the trees.

I ran. I threw all caution and silence to the wind and ran, my feet flying, making careless sounds, the brambles scratching my legs. I screamed Drew’s name, then screamed it again. There was no answer.

I came to the ragged edge of the trees and broke through toward the beach, heedless. The ground here was littered with broken branches and driftwood, overgrown with low weeds and vines. I wove and leaped obstacle after obstacle. “Drew!” I screamed.

The beach opened before me, the water dark as oil, the horizon suddenly wide and undulating in the sea’s endless motion. A cold wind tore at my hair, smarted on my cheeks. I ran down the beach, toward the water. “Drew!”

My body went cold; my jaw froze; my spine seized. I was gripped with the terror from the night before in the kitchen, the same helpless fear I had felt leaning against the door. It was electrifying terror in my arms, my legs, the palms of my hands. I whirled and looked wildly along the edge of the trees. A fallen branch flew upward as if flung or kicked by a powerful foot. There was nothing there.

“Who are you?” I screamed into the wind.

There was no answer, only the cold moonlight, the wind whipping my hair into my eyes, the freezing sweat on my back. I had my back to the water now, truly cornered. I looked back and forth again, back and forth, along the line of trees.

“What do you want?” I screamed, so hard I felt a painful rasp in my throat. I was bent almost double by the effort.

Again, it did not answer.

I was nearly sobbing now, I was so afraid. “
Who are you?
” I screamed again, my voice cracking and rasping this time. “Answer me!”

It listened. I knew it did. I took a breath to scream again, when something touched me. I jumped and let out a sound that was unholy, but it was a warm touch, a human hand on my shoulder. I turned, and Drew was there.

“Jillian,” he said, grasping my shoulders. “We’re getting out of here. Now.”

“Did you see it?” I gasped. “Can you see it?”

He shook his head. His hair was damp. A sheen of sweat shone on his throat. “Move,” he said, pulling my arm.

I let myself be pulled, but he stopped, stilled. He was looking at something behind me. His face bore no expression. I turned and followed his gaze back toward the water.

My footprints were there, in the dark sand. And Drew’s were there, larger, coming toward mine. Behind both sets, just where the water lapped the shore, was a third set. It was unmistakably two human feet, standing still. There were no prints leading to them and no prints leading away.

The prints faced away from the water, toward me. It had been standing behind me, watching me as I screamed into the wind.

Drew moved closer, bent down. I was still locked in terror, but whatever it had been was gone. I jerked my legs into motion and followed him.

The surf was washing the prints away. Next to them were words, also being swallowed by the water:

MAKE M

The other letters were already gone. Water washed into the footprints, filling their hollows. I noticed the prints had a large, V-shaped gap between the big toes and the others; then the footprints were gone as well.

Drew took my arm again, and I let him pull me. But the sight of those prints never left my vision as we made our way back toward the trees.