Haunted Shadows 1: Sickness Behind Young Eyes (8 page)

15

When the feeling started to fade I
walked back into the bedroom. I picked up the diary, ignoring the ice that
spread across my palms. My chest was tight as if I had run a marathon, and I
felt like I was going to drop. I opened the drawer on my desk, threw in the
diary and slammed it shut.

Alone again, I wasn’t sure that
anything had actually been here. The presence I had sensed felt like a bad
dream, drifting away as I swam into consciousness. Had I imagined it all? Had
she really been there?

I looked at the stone wall and saw no
trace of any hole. Relief flooded through me. I ran into the bathroom and stopped
in shock in the doorway. I had expected the bathtub to go back to normal, but I
wasn’t that lucky. The long strands of hair hung over the sides of the
porcelain and dripped dirty water onto the floor.

What was real?

I thought back to the letter. What
was it the man had written about Emily?

They say she comes at night. She
knocks on your bedroom door.

Knock, knock, knock.

She’ll carry on all night until you
answer. She’ll never leave save for day break, and then at night she’s back.
Knocking on your door. The knocks getting louder and louder until you answer or
tell her to come in.

I hadn’t heard any knocking, and
there wasn’t a chance in hell I would answer the door even if I did. Questions
fired through my brain as I began to doubt my own mind. Was all of this getting
to me? Where the years of reading about urban legends finally catching up? Had
I broken my own brain by studying too hard and reading about bullshit?

I sat on the edge of my bed and
stared at my desk. The diary was the key to everything, I knew. Within it, if I
ever built up the courage to read it again, was Emily’s story. I hoped it
stayed hidden forever. I couldn’t hold the thing in my hands again. I couldn’t
tell Jeremiah I had figured out the cipher. To do that would be to acknowledge
her. If I read her diary again, I knew I would hear those terrible knocks on my
bedroom door.

I glanced at the stone walls around
me. I felt naked, like unseen faces stared at me from the stonework. Some
curious, others laughing. A feeling of evil intent seeped out, like someone
meant me harm.

I scampered down the bed and crawled
under the sheets. I pulled them tight up to my neck, reached out beside me and
flicked on the bedside lamp. I was back to this, then. Back to sleeping with
the light on again.

Suddenly I wished I hadn’t wasted my
teenage years lost in the grim text of folklore and legends. I wished I had
picked up the phone once in a while. Spent time basking in the smiles of my
friends, hearing their laughter and actually listening to them talk, rather
than worrying about my next assignment. I was letting life spin away from me,
trapping it within the covers of dusty books.

I wanted to go and see Jeremiah, but
the prideful part of me locked my body in place. I wouldn’t let him see me this
way. I was stronger than this. At least, I thought I was. I cocooned myself in
my bedsheets and hoped that soon the chill would leave my body and that my
eyelids would start to feel heavy and allow me some escape.

As the black of night swam outside the
window, I let the hours drain away. Try as I might I couldn’t shut my eyes. I
couldn’t take them away from the bedroom door. My ears pricked up, expecting
any second now to hear those terrible sounds.

Knock, knock, knock.

16

When I crept down the stairs and into
the pub lounge the next morning, Jeremiah’s seat was empty. I didn’t think it
likely that he would have slept in, because he seemed like he functioned on as
little shut-eye as possible. Outside the sky was murky, and the dim light in
the corner of the room didn’t do much to illuminate the shadows. It didn’t feel
like a quaint place to me anymore. It felt like a chill clung to me wherever I
went, like a mouth blew frozen breaths on me from the darkness.

“What do you want?”

I jerked my head up and saw Marsha
stood next to the table, bony arms folded against her chest. My stomach felt
light, but the idea of food didn’t sit well.

“I’ll just take some toast and a
coffee.”

She looked at me in disgust.

“That all?”

“That’s all, Marsha.”

Instead of walking into the kitchen
she hovered at the table like a ghost. I felt irritation scratch at my chest. I
had never been a morning person, and I was even less so when my throat was
thick with phlegm and my body still shook from the scare I’d had the night
before.

“Can I help you?” I said, not caring
to hide to annoyance in my voice.

Marsha’s skin stretched sternly
across her face and showed off the bones beneath. She hadn’t put on any makeup,
and black circles rested below her eyes. I noticed a silver wedding ring on her
hand, but I couldn’t remember ever seeing her husband. She’d never mentioned
him, either, and it seemed like she ran the pub herself.

“I know what you’re doing,” she said.

I stared ahead of me and feigned
disinterest. “Just some university work.”

Her face was grave, her skin pale.
She looked around her, as if checking that nobody watched us. From the silence
in the pub, without even the radio playing, I knew we were alone. Or I hoped we
were, at least.

“I know why you’re here,” she said.

“I don’t know what the hell you’re
talking about.”

I expected her to raise her voice or
show some of her trademark contempt. Instead she pulled out the chair and sat
across from me. She stretched her arms out along the table as if she were
begging. She leant forward and met my eyes.

“You don’t know what you’re doing.
You have to stop. You have to tell him to leave well alone.”

I shrank back in my seat. I didn’t
know what to say. Marsha harsh tones were gone, replaced by what sounded like
genuine concern. I was at a loss. Marsha twisted her wedding ring around her
finger, and I saw that the skin underneath was red. Despite how thin her
fingers were, her ring cut into her skin.

The pub door opened and Jeremiah
walked in. Water dripped from his coat and fell onto the floor in patters. His
hair was soaked, and the tangles made him look like a shaggy street dog.
Despite his drenching there was a spark in his face.

Marsha bolted to her feet.

“I’ll get your toast.”

“Save it,” said Jeremiah. “We’re leaving.”

“But I haven’t had my breakfast,” I
said.

Despite not feeling hungry, the fact
Jeremiah had already decided I wasn’t having anything to eat made me want it
all the more.

“Get something later. We’ve got work
to do.”

Outside the rain had stopped. The
clouds looked thin and sparse, as though giant hands had choked the water out
of them and left them to die. The cobblestones were stained dark with rain. One
woman walked down the street with her umbrella above her, unaware that the sky
had stopped throwing water on it.

I struggled to keep up with
Jeremiah’s brisk strides. He walked fast normally, but today it seemed like he
was in a race.

“Gonna tell me where we’re going?”

“I’ve got something.”

“Great, but what?”

“You’ll see.”

We walked through the village and
passed the school. We took a few turns through narrow streets and then came out
on the east side, leaving the main square and shops behind us. As we moved out
from the shelter of the buildings we reached the fields. The wind swirled savagely
and battered my coat. There was a building in front of us.

“Any luck with the diary?” said
Jeremiah.

A pang of dread hit my chest. I’d
been waiting for him to ask.

“No,” I said.

Jeremiah’s face dropped for a second.

The building looked like an old manor,
the kind of country house a rich family might build as a holiday home. From the
front I counted forty windows. It reached three stories high, and all along the
stone work were intricate carvings of swirls and shapes that I couldn’t make
sense of. Two pillars stood outside the front entrance. They were cracked, as
if they strained against the weight of the roof above them. The manor looked
like it was dissolving away piece by piece, as if the countryside was fighting
to reclaim it and pull it deep into the earth. They had long ago given up on
maintenance of this place, I decided. Whoever owned it was happy to let it
crumble, or maybe they were helpless to do anything about it. A sign outside
read ‘Sleepy Meadow Retirement Home.”

“Grim place,” I said.

Jeremiah stopped walking. He scanned
the front of the building.

“Everything looks grim on days like
this.”

Black metal railings surrounded the
manor. They reached seven feet into the air and were capped with thick spikes,
giving the building the feel of a medieval prison. I thought about the name,
‘Sleepy Meadow’ and how ill-fitting it was. There were meadows surrounding it,
sure, but they were harsh and windswept. It wasn’t a place that inspired sleep,
and I couldn’t imagine spending a night here.

“This is the most populated
retirement home in a hundred mile radius,” said Jeremiah. “It’s packed with old
gits.”

“There must be at least forty rooms,”
I said.

He nodded. “More, actually. There are
fifty-seven residents, according to the receptionist I spoke to.”

“But how? There’s not even that many
people in the village.”

“Think about the kind of place this
is. People move here to retire. Even if they have kids, the children leave for
the cities the first chance they get. It’s a village where people come to die.”

“So what are we doing here?”

“There’s someone we need to see.”

Inside the manor dim lights fought
against the gloom. The lobby spread out wide like a cavern. The carpet
underneath our feet was patchy and stained, as if the people in charge had long
ago given up trying to clean it. Large, industrial-sized radiators lined the
walls but if they gave off any heat, I couldn’t feel it.

The receptionist sat behind her desk.
Next to her a plug-in heater whirred and emitted a warm glow. Along the desk, pushed
far away from her, was a stuffed owl. Its eyes were pinpricks of black and its
beak looked sharp enough to cut skin.

“You the fella who rang earlier?” she
said.

Jeremiah nodded.

“I’ll take you to Clive.”

She led us away from reception and
down a corridor that smelled of bleach. The roof was low and at points it
looked like Jeremiah was going to bang his head. It was like it had been
designed for short people. Maybe the family who once owned didn’t have any
members over six feet tall. We stopped outside a door with the number thirteen
on it.

“This is Clive’s room. Try not to
rile him up. He doesn’t look it, but he’s a vicious bugger.”

I looked at her in surprise. I
thought we had come to see a weak old man, but she made it sound like Clive was
prisoner. I expected her to reach to her side and pull out a truncheon and
pepper spray.

She gave two sharp knocks. A thin
strip of light shone under the door, and footsteps walked toward us. The door
knob rattled and twisted, but the door didn’t open. It started to turn quicker,
and I heard groans from behind it. The handle shook furiously, as if in fright.

“Slide the bolt, Clive,” said the
receptionist in a pleasant, but patronising, tone of voice.

A bolt clicked and the handle turned,
and this time the door opened. We were greeted by a face that looked like a
corpse emerging from a coffin. Clive looked ancient. His skin was wrinkled so
that there was not an inch of smoothness, and it seemed dried out. His wrists
were bony, and a white night gown clung onto his torso.

“Clive, we have two people here to
see you.”

Clive stood uneasily at the door, as
if wondering whether to let us in. Finally he took a step to the side. He
smiled at me, and despite looking like death his smile was warm, and his eyes
shone behind it.  It struck me that I felt at ease in his presence.

“What a surprise,” he said. “Come in,
come in.”

I had expected his voice to be dry
and croaky, but his tones flowed like warm treacle. He walked into his room and
sat on the edge of his bed. I stood in the doorway, unsure of what to do.

“Come on love,” said Clive, and waved
his hand in the air to beckon me in.

“I’ll leave you to it,” said the
receptionist. “Remember; don’t get him into a state. There’s a panic alarm next
to the bed if you need anything.”

Jeremiah and I walked into Clive’s
room. I shut the door behind me. Despite the gloom of the manor, he had made
bright use of his space. There were flowers on the mantelpiece, and a bookcase
filled with adventure books was opposite his bed. Paintings hung on the walls.

Clive crossed his legs. “First time I
have ever heard her call it a panic alarm,” he said. “They normally call it the
care button. Makes me sound like a murderer.”

We took seats next to Clive’s bed.
Jeremiah sank into his like he was lounging in a gentleman’s club. I sat
upright. The wooden spine of the chair dug into my back.

“I can’t tell you how good it is to
see you again,” said Clive.

I shot a look at Jeremiah, but he
didn’t betray any surprise. I wondered if the two of them had met before. Then
I realised that Clive had addressed the words to me. I didn’t know what to say.

“It’s been too long,” he carried on.
“When do I get to see my beautiful grandson again? He’s not asleep in the car
is he?”

“I don’t know what – “

Jeremiah gave me a sharp kick on the
ankle. I saw his eyebrows arch as if trying to tell me something. I looked at
Clive and thought about where we were. It slid into place.

“You know I always love to see you,”
said Clive, “but we’ll have to be quick. I have a class to teach in thirty
minutes.”

Suddenly the room seemed cast in
shadow. I looked at the old man perched on the end of his bed. It made me sad
to think about what happened to our minds as we got older. That thoughts could
start to get jumbled up, that memories could seep through into reality and
confuse us as to what was real. Clive had once been a teacher, I realised, and
his past was swimming into the present. He must have a daughter, too.

“We won’t take too much of your time,
Clive. I know you’re busy, and you can’t keep the school waiting, eh?” said
Jeremiah.