Heller's Regret (11 page)

“You know it?” I asked, excited.

He nodded, his enormous eyes clouded with
emotion. “It’s mine.” I wasn’t sure what to say to him. Perhaps
he’d lost it while playing down here one day. “Keep digging in that
spot.”

I renewed my efforts, flinging dirt over my
shoulder in a frenzy, thrilled I’d made some real progress. A loud
banging on the front door reverberated down to the basement. Samuel
and I stopped what we were doing.
Them!
I signalled for
Samuel to find a hiding spot amongst the rubbish. I crept halfway
up the stairs. The banging continued for an inordinate amount of
time before halting abruptly. I heard rattling at the front door,
swiftly followed by the sound of heavy footsteps in the entry hall.
They must have picked the lock, the tricky bastards.

“Matilda?” an accented voice boomed out.
Other voices spoke as well, so it was difficult to calculate how
many of Them had come. I crept as close to the kitchen door as I
dared, turning the lights to the basement off as I stealthily
climbed further up the stairs to the door.

“There’s her bag. I recognise it from when
she put it in the vehicle when we headed out. It hasn’t even been
unpacked,” said one of Them.

“Her handbag’s sitting on the floor next to
that chair and her mobile’s on the table. What the hell’s going on
here? Where is she?” said another.

“
Matilda?
” shouted the loud voice
again.

“Are you sure it was her you spoke to,
Boss?”

“No, I’m not sure. It sounded like her, but
she was strange, distant. And she hasn’t answered her phone
since.”

“God, it’s hot in here. I’m sweating like a
pig,” one of Them complained.

I pulled my cardigan tighter around me and
shivered in the chill. Someone came striding towards the kitchen. I
could see that They were wearing black clothes. Just like the ones
who came to the door that day.

I scurried back down to the basement, first
mostly closing the door behind me while they weren’t looking.

“Boss!” yelled one of Them. More footsteps
hurried towards the kitchen. “There’s a teapot here on the table.
It’s still warm. Someone’s in the house.”

“I want this place torn apart,” the first man
ordered in a hard threatening voice. “Find her.”

They bounded into action. I knew They would
find Samuel and take him away from me. This was it. It was me
against this bunch of big men. The woman in the painting and Mrs
Grimsley were counting on me to keep him safe.

I turned on the torch I’d been using to
better illuminate anything I’d found. I beckoned to Samuel to stay
concealed and took the gun from its hiding spot.

Samuel whispered some quick instructions on
what to do with it, and with shaky frozen fingers, I crammed in the
bullets. I didn’t even know if the gun worked and I had no real
idea how to use it. Just point and shoot, I hoped. My biggest worry
was shivering in the bitter cold, making my arms tremble
uncontrollably.

I turned off the torch and crouched on the
ground, waiting patiently. I’d never been more afraid in my life.
Samuel didn’t make a peep, but his nervousness showed in his big
eyes. I regarded him fondly. He was such a good boy. He looked back
at me trustingly. I didn’t want to do this, but it was for Samuel
and the woman, I reminded myself.

They must have finished with the top floor,
because I could hear Them stamping around every room on the ground
floor again. I wasn’t sure how many of Them there were, but it
certainly sounded like a crowd. I didn’t have enough bullets to see
Them all off, but I only needed to shoot a couple to scare the rest
of Them away.

“There’s blood everywhere in a bedroom
upstairs, Boss,” one of Them said loudly. “Something odd’s going on
in this place. I hope Tilly’s okay.”

I took a deep, steadying breath – it was only
a matter of time before they investigated the basement. I wished I
had some tea down here with me. I suddenly had a raging thirst.
I’d take care of that later, once this was over and They’d
left
, I promised myself.

“Basement!” one of Them yelled, pushing open
the door to the stairs. Footsteps echoed on the stairs.

“Find the lights!” ordered someone.

My heart pumped with adrenalin as I raised
the gun and aimed it. I had to shoot while the light was out. I had
the advantage over Them because They were looking down into the
dark, but I was looking up into the light. I pressed the trigger.
It was harder than I thought, stiff with age. I had to jam several
fingers into the trigger to have the strength to depress it. The
noise was deafening in the confined space and the recoil threw me
backwards, hitting the wall and jolting the gun from my hands with
a loud clatter.

There was chaos on the stairs, men scrambling
in reverse, one trigger happy man returning fire blindly. I
scrabbled in the dark for the gun when a bullet flew close to my
head. I ducked behind a crate. I had to find my weapon.

“Hold your fucking fire! Tilly might be held
captive down there,” I heard one of Them shout at the others. “Find
those lights, now!”

I reached around on the ground, my hand
closing over the gun. I propped it in my badly shaking right hand
with my left, finger on the trigger. They finally located the light
switch, flooding the basement with light. A throng of men stood on
the stairs, all dressed in black. They peered down at me in shock,
their much more modern guns pointed in my direction.

I aimed my gun straight at them, trying not
to blink in the blinding light.

“Tilly! What are you doing? Put that down,”
urged one of Them, his face a mask of horror, his light grey eyes
huge with apprehension. His voice softened. “Come on, Tilly, put it
down. You know you don’t how to use it. You’ll hurt somebody.”

“
All of you get back!
” I screamed. “I
won’t let you take Samuel away from me!”

“What she’s talking about?” asked one of the
men.

The grey-eyed man yelled back over his
shoulder. “Get Heller down here now. Tell him we found him.” Men
ran off to obey.

“Get back,” I screamed again, and pulled the
trigger a second time. My aim was terrible. The bullet flew far too
high, hitting the ceiling above their heads, showering them with
plaster. The powerful recoil flung me backwards against the wall
again. My head hit something hard. I started feeling faint as I
tried to rearrange the gun in my hand.

They withdrew momentarily, but I could hear
Them talking about me, pretending to be worried. They didn’t fool
me for a second. They tried to talk to me again, this time sending
down the man who appeared to be in charge, the tall, blond one.

“Matilda. You need help. Let me help you,” he
said, his gentle voice belying the alarmed expression on his face
at the sight of me.
I bet he hadn’t expected me to be armed
,
I thought with satisfaction. They thought I’d be a pushover.

“Get away,” I demanded, not having the energy
to scream anymore. “I know what you want. You want to take Samuel
away from me. I won’t let you. I promised Mrs Grimsley I wouldn’t
let anything happen to him.”

I weakened, sliding further down the wall
until I almost lay on the floor. The gun became an increasingly
heavy burden to hold.

“Matilda, my sweet, listen to me. There is no
child living here. Grimsley lied to us. She’s never been married,
never had children, let alone grandchildren. There is no Samuel
Grimsley. I checked the birth records. The only Samuel Grimsley I
could find went missing, aged ten, back in 1905.”

“You’re lying! You’re trying to confuse me.
He’s here with me right now.” But when I looked over to where
Samuel had been hiding, he was no longer there.

“Samuel,” I shouted in panic. “Samuel, where
have you gone? Come back, it’s not safe for you with these people!
Samuel?” Had I passed out at some point, allowing Them to steal
him? Was this whole story this man spun me just Their way of wiping
my memory?

“Matilda. Please let me take you to the
hospital. You’re hurt. You’re bleeding badly. You need medical
attention.”

There was something about his tender tone and
the tremendous concern in his face that triggered memories from the
hazy depths of my mind. I searched his searing blue eyes.

“I know you, don’t I?” I asked hesitantly,
straining to recall him.

“Yes, you do, my sweet. You know me very
well. And you know that I care about you very much. I want to help
you.”

“Why can’t I remember anything? My brain is
so foggy.”

“I don’t know what’s happened to you here.
You do need some urgent help though. Let me take you to the
hospital. Please.”

I tried to protest, looking around for
Samuel, but my energy ran out and I slumped against the floor in a
faint, the gun clattering out of my hand. He rushed down the
stairs. I came to and tried to stop him.

“Promise me that someone will stay and look
after Samuel for me. He can’t stay here alone. He’s just a little
boy. He’ll be frightened.”

He promised to leave a couple of men behind
in the house, so I allowed him to effortlessly pick me up in his
arms. I found myself trusting him, and I couldn’t say for sure
why.

“Why are you so wet?” I asked in
surprise.

“Matilda, this house is a furnace. We’re all
drenched in sweat. It must be fifty degrees in here at least.”

“I’ve been so cold.”

With infinite care, as if I were fragile, he
placed me in the passenger seat in his car. Later, I couldn’t
remember the trip to the hospital at all and not much about my
eventual treatment by an emergency team, Heller banned from the
room. The doctor examined me, listening carefully to my rambling,
incoherent reasoning behind why I was bleeding from my wrists,
while a team of nurses stitched me up, took blood tests and
inserted multiple IV needles in my arms.

She rang someone and another doctor came
down, carefully questioning me about what I’d said to the first
doctor. I tried to be rational and calm when I explained myself
again, but the increasing expression of unease on his face betrayed
his feelings. He quietly discussed me with the other doctor and
they made a decision to admit me to the mental health unit for
overnight observation.

A nurse came along after I’d been processed
for admission and helped me into the shower with some sympathy. The
warm water ran dark with dirt and blood. Afterwards, clean and
dressed in one of the hospital’s shapeless gowns, the nurse took my
blood pressure, pulse and temperature, checked the IV bags and
left, patting my shoulder and telling me to get some sleep. She
locked the doors to the room behind her. Unlike other hospital
wards in which I’d stayed, there was no curtain between the doors
and the room. Anybody could peer inside the room and observe
me.

I found out later that Heller had not been
allowed into the ward. One of the overworked nurses had explained
the reasons why with patience she rapidly lost as he kept trying to
bully her into letting him stay in my room. In the end, she was
forced to threaten to call the police to make him leave.

That night in hospital was easily one of the
worst times in my life. I fretted over Samuel while the doctors and
nurses came into my room at all hours to examine and question me,
huddled together in earnest conferences about me. I felt detached
from the situation and from everyone around me. All I wanted was to
be back in the house looking after Samuel.

A huge window overlooking the entrance to the
hospital took up most of one of the walls of my room. I watched
hospital staff coming from, and going to, work, free to do what
they wanted while I remained imprisoned in this room.

Everybody who spoke to me throughout the
night was considerate and patient. Though nobody came out and said
it to me, of course, I sensed that they’d assessed me as not being
a high-risk patient. Though to them I’d self-harmed, despite my
repeated attempts to explain the logic behind that action, I wasn’t
presenting as dangerous or violent. I was grateful for that small
mercy, because I suspected that if left with no other immediate
options, the staff would restrain patients who were otherwise
uncontrollable. But no matter how much I might console myself with
that, the inescapable fact remained that I’d been admitted to the
mental health unit.
They believe I’m crazy
, I thought to
myself more than once, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

The night dragged on. Though unbelievably
tired, I slept only fitfully, the cannulas in my arm stinging every
time I moved. In addition to that discomfort, being woken regularly
for ‘observation’ rendered the chances of finding any sleep
virtually impossible. I met the dawn with tired, blurry eyes, weary
down to my bones, barely able to ring for a nurse to help me make
my shaky way to the bathroom.

About an hour later the same nurse unlocked
the door to allow a man to bring me a breakfast tray. As I pecked
at the food apathetically, pushing most of it away uneaten, another
doctor came into the room, accompanied by the second doctor from
last night. They talked about me for a couple of minutes as though
I wasn’t there and the second doctor left.

The new doctor pulled up a chair next to my
bed and took me through my story yet again. He asked me a lot of
questions about my activities in the house: why had I cut myself
and applied eyeliner; why had I smeared my blood on the painting;
why had I insisted that it was freezing inside the house when
others had told me the house was roasting; why hadn’t I eaten,
bathed or changed my clothes for days; why had I thought ‘They’
were coming to get Samuel; why didn’t I recognise my own workmates;
and why exactly did I believe I’d just time looking after a boy who
apparently didn’t exist. I answered as honestly as I could,
slightly more coherent than I’d been last night.