Bad House (7 page)

Fuck them,
he thought, placing the pc on the coffee-table in front of him and lying down on the leather sofa. The last thing he wanted to do was cause a scene in front of Jacob; he would talk to Holly when they were done eating. He was just going to have to make her understand that there was something wrong with the house, that he
wasn’t
losing his mind. His eyelids grew heavy and he gave in to the bone-weariness.

Just a few seconds shut-eye,
was his final thought before he drifted away on a sea of blackness.

CHAPTER EIGHT

He opened his eyes to darkness.

Shit, how long have I been asleep?

Groaning, he sat up. Outside, it was raining heavily. Fat raindrops pelted the window pane and he got to his feet with the intention of drawing the curtains and switching on the light. He felt odd – his nose was clogged and achy like he was coming down with a cold, and his head throbbed.

What time is it?

The digital clock on the DVD player blinked 9.09 in the gloom. The screen of the laptop was black, and he bent down to swipe the mouse. The sudden brightness made him wince and he squinted at the screen.

Strange.

Instead of the screen being divided into four sections depicting four rooms as it was before, it was now entirely static. He swiped the mouse once more and the computer light on the keyboard blinked off at the same moment a flash of lightning lit up the living-room.

Ian jumped, heart pounding.

Power-cut,
he thought when he noticed that the digital clock on the DVD player had also blinked out. Rumbling thunder followed a few seconds later and he let out a shaky breath.

That bloody computer better not have blown a fuse…

He was feeling spooked. The rainstorm was hard and heavy and jangling on his already shredded nerves. He thought of the fuse-box in the basement, and shuddered. He truly didn’t fancy a trip down there in the dark.

Maybe it isn’t just this house. Maybe the whole neighbourhood is out too.

He wouldn’t know that without looking out a second-floor window as the only view from the first floor was of trees.

But first of all he had to find Holly. Jacob would be tucked up in bed by now, and Holly was probably in bed too, reading her back-lit kindle.

Once out in the dark hallway, he didn’t shout for Holly for fear of waking up Jacob. The hallway was dark and ominous and he walked down it with a bad feeling twisting in his gut. Up ahead, the door to the kitchen stood ajar.

I Should go there first, I’m pretty sure I put the torch in the kitchen drawer.

For the first time he noticed that the front of his t-shirt was clinging wetly to his chest.

That’s not sweat
…

He brought his hand up to his sopping chest, and even in the dark he could see that his hand came away dark and wet.

That’s blood
.

He swayed on his feet as another rumble of thunder reverberated in the air around him. That bad feeling intensified tenfold and he forced down the rising panic.

Why is there blood on me?

More to the point,
whose
blood is on me?

And now he thought of it, his nose was wet too. He barked out laughter when he realised he’d had a nosebleed. The
mother
of all nosebleeds, but still a nosebleed nonetheless.

That would explain the bunged-up nose
.

If the state of his t-shirt was anything to go by, he must have lost at least a pint of blood.  Shaking off the sense of unease, he picked up his pace.

But like in some clichéd horror film, the quicker he walked, the further away the kitchen door seemed to get.

“What the…” he panted, breaking out into a sprint.

Adrenalin flooded his veins and he ran flat-out. The door rushed at him suddenly at breakneck speed and he fell through it, unable to stop himself in time. Tripping on his own feet, he landed in a heap on the floor.

“Ian? What are you doing?”

He looked up in confusion at his wife, his heart slamming so hard in his ribcage he feared he was having a heart-attack. When he saw the little suitcase with wheels by her side, he struggled to his feet.

“Is that
blood
?” she asked.

Ian ignored the question. “Why do you have a suitcase? Where are you going?”

“I’m leaving you, Ian.”

“What? You can’t. Where will you go? It’s the middle of the night.”

“It’s quarter past nine.”

Ian struggled to gather together his fractured thoughts. His mind raced as wildly as his heart as he tried to make sense of everything.

The room was bathed in flickering candlelight. Holly had lit some tea-lights and stood them in a neat row on the kitchen table. Her face was cast into strong shadows, rendering her expression unreadable. Her eyes were black sockets and for a shuddering, horrible second he was convinced he was looking at a corpse.

What happened out there in the hallway?

Oh dear God, my wife is leaving me
…

Only then did he notice Jacob for the first time. It was like he emerged from the shadows. He was
sure
that he hadn’t been stood there before.

“But there’s a
power-cut
.”

He knew it was a stupid thing to say, but it felt important, somehow. If only he could think straight.

“So? I’m sure my car will still work.”

The sarcasm which dripped from her voice was not lost on him.

“Where will you go?”

More thunder accompanied his question. Rain lashed against the windows and the lightning briefly illuminated the water cascading over the glass, which in turn cast waterfall-like reflections on the shiny surfaces of the kitchen.

“To my mum’s. We’ll be there by midnight if we leave now. Come on, Jacob honey.”

“Don’t go. Please. Things have got a little… A little
strange
. But we can fix this.”

“Jacob. I said now.” She turned those black holes of eyes onto him. “Clean yourself up, Ian, and I don’t just mean the blood. I’ll call you in a couple of days.”

“You can’t just leave, for a start you have hardly anything with you. Please, just stay.”

“Like I said, I’ll call you in a few days, maybe arrange to pick up the rest of my stuff if we can’t work this out. I am not discussing this now.”

Ian recognised that tone to her voice for what it was – absolute and final. Helplessly, he watched on as she pushed Jacob out of the room with the suitcase on the pull-out handle trundling behind her.

And just like that, she was gone.

She’s gone for good,
he thought in a moment of horrid certainty.

No. She’ll come back. She has to
...

Without thinking, he pulled out the first bottle of wine he put his hand to on the wine-rack. It was an expensive Bordeaux he had been saving for a special dinner he had planned to cook for his wife on Saturday night when Jacob was in bed.

That ship’s sailed,
he thought humourlessly, twisting off the screw-top cap. He grabbed a big glass and poured a third of the bottle into it. The wine burnt a trail down to his stomach, going some way to calming his frayed nerves.

His thoughts strayed back to the incident in the hallway just now.

That was some freaky shit. Should have put a camera in the hallway too
.

Not for the first time since moving into the house, he wondered if he was going insane. He pondered that thought as he gulped his wine.

The power.

He really should take himself upstairs and peer through a bedroom window, see if next door was in darkness too before he attempted the fuse-box in the basement.

It’s Marianna’s house I can see through the upstairs windows,
came the unbidden thought.

Despite his wife having just left him, a little shiver of excitement rippled through him.

Maybe I should pop round, see if she’s okay. Maybe her husband is away and she’s all alone and scared in that big house
…

No. Holly had just left him, for Christ’s sake, what was wrong with him? He took another swig of wine and was surprised to find that his glass was drained. Pouring himself another, he then located the drawer with the torch in it and was pleased to find it worked.

He hurried through the hallway, fully expecting it to distort around him. It didn’t.

Once in their bedroom,

(
just mine now, the bitch has left me
)

he peered out the window at the rain-soaked night. Up here, the wind howled and the trees swayed. Marianna’s house was lit up, and a small knot of disappointment tightened in his chest.

I have no excuse to go round now.

Yeah, you do. Your phone-line is down and you can’t charge your mobile
.

Absently, he glanced down at the glass of wine he still held in his hand, and brought it to his lips. His head felt fuzzy and his face strangely numb as he contemplated what to do next.

Go and look at the fuse-box, you useless son of a bitch
.

Just as he turned to leave, movement in an upstairs window of Marianna’s house that was visible through a gap in the trees caught his eye. His head snapped back round like an invisible hand had slapped his cheek.

Is that Marianna? And is she naked?

He rested his burning forehead against the cool, rain-lashed window pane and stared out at the wet night. It was hard to see for sure, given that water ran in rivers down the glass and her window was a fair distance away.

No, that’s definitely her
…

He stared hard, safe in the knowledge that she couldn’t see him as he was in darkness.

What’s she doing?

She appeared to be just standing there, her arms raised and her hands resting on the glass, high above her head. She was mostly a blurry, rain-streaked shape, but he could still make out a neat little triangle of dark pubic hair and the dark red smudges that tipped her full breasts.

It was like she was looking right at him.

No, that’s impossible.

His mouth was suddenly dry and his heart slammed against his ribcage. It really did look like she was staring at him.

Ever so slowly, she brought one hand down between her legs. The quick, back and forth motions of her hand left him with no doubts as to what she was doing.

“God,” he said under his breath, staring hard at the vision.

Without even realising on a conscious level that he was doing so, he brought his own hand down to his cock which was straining against the fabric of his jeans. He squeezed himself through the denim, groaning softly with need.

The movement of Marianna’s hand grew more frantic and unthinkingly he unzipped his fly and freed his cock. The coldness of his palm against the turgid heat of his erection made him shiver. With his gaze fixed on the prize, he jerked himself off.

Now Marianna had lifted up a leg and had placed the sole of her foot high up on the window frame. If it wasn’t for the rain, she was exposing
everything.

She knows I’m watching, she has to
…

But how could she possibly know that?

Ian was getting to the point of no return, the point where he didn’t give a flying fuck about anything except coming. Normally he might concede that her behaviour was at best odd, at worst downright spooky but at that precise moment in time all he cared about was the heady sensations building in his groin.

Oh yeah, baby, show me what you got
…

Marianna seemed to be getting more and more into it. Her head was thrown back, her hair a black, shimmering frame that draped her heavenly torso.

“Fuck,” Ian groaned, as red-hot sperm pulsed out his cock in hard jets. The milky fluid hit the window pane in aggressive spurts before dribbling down the glass.

As soon as it was out of him, he felt like a fool.

What the fuck am I doing?

A flash of lightning split the heaving sky, and he jumped, his flaccid, soggy penis hanging out of his jeans. Zipping himself up, he looked over to Marianna’s window.

He screamed at the same moment as the thunder rumbled. Marianna was still in the window, but something was wrong.
Badly
wrong. Her head was twisted at an unnatural right angle on her neck, like it had been
snapped
. Her breasts were mashed against the glass, and he could no longer see her nipples.

It took him a moment to realise that her nipples were no longer visible because she was covered in blood. From the neck down, she was sheened in red. It left smears on the glass, further blurring her appalling visage.

And worst of all, she was still masturbating in that same way with her foot flung up high on the window frame.

Ian clutched his heart and staggered backwards when another jagged flash lit up the sky. In the brief second his gaze was drawn away from the window by the lightning, Marianna was gone. He rubbed his eyes hard with his knuckles, and when he looked again, she was still gone.

What the fuck is wrong with me?