Nightsiders (2 page)

The pompous professor was giving a brief synopsis of his book, some cheapjack volume of popular psychology. Robert changed the channel, and was relieved when he found an old, familiar refrain: Nina Simone singing about the “Backlash Blues.”

But for some reason he could not get the words from the radio out of his mind. They were haunting him, or taunting him. He could not be sure which.

Our homes have already been invaded by this insidious enemy that seeks to twist our minds and poison our hearts.

Jesus, why was that staying with him? The phrase was stuck in his brain, like an insect trapped in a jar, constantly beating itself against the glass until it went insane. He knew it was linked to the bad times they’d all gone through, but he also knew he should not allow those memories to hold such power over him.

Robert stared at the road ahead. He was alone, so horribly, terribly alone, despite the presence of his family inside the car. The moment soon passed, but it left behind an emotional residue—a stain—he could not remove however hard he tried.

Even among loved ones
, he thought,
we are entirely on our own.

“So,” he said, mainly to shift his own dark mood. “Are we all looking forward to getting back to the new house? Settling in, unpacking properly this time, and starting things again?” He wished he had kept quiet. The words he had used, and the way he’d said them, were linked directly to the memories he was trying to keep down.

“Yeah,” said Molly. “It should be fun. Apart from the new school.” She made a puking noise. Beside her, Connor laughed, finally looking up from his game.

“Oh, come on, you two. Dad’s done us proud with this place. I know we didn’t get the chance to get settled in before the trip, but now we can make our mark on the house, make it a real home. There’s still a long time left of the summer holidays, and we can forget about school until then. In the meantime, let’s all just dive into this new adventure and start being a family again.” Despite her surface optimism, Robert knew Sarah’s eyes betrayed how she really felt. She was clearly afraid: of the new life they were planning, of the strange territory represented by the new house and the countryside…of everything.

“Yes, that’s what we want to hear: some positivity.” His own voice held a note of trepidation. Why couldn’t they all just admit they were scared and be done with it? Was it so difficult to open yourself up and show your weaknesses, even to the ones closest to you?

They all went quiet, as if in recognition of their unspoken fears, and Robert stared through the windscreen as if he had never seen a road before. The trees moved slowly, their tops shifting like nodding heads in a slight breeze, and leaves clutched like fingers at the air. Daylight pierced the spaces between those leaves, creating bright spots in the dark treetops. He saw a rabbit racing along the verge, head down, ears pinned back, and he smiled sadly as it veered off into a clump of bushes. The sun hung in the sky as if it were painted on; its glare was unbearable when he looked directly at it, but when viewed askance the yellow blob seemed to become more solid.

Sarah’s hand strayed to touch his knee. Her long fingers clasped him, lightly but with enough pressure to let him know she meant it.

It’s going to be all right
, he thought.
Everything will be fine
.

Before long the battered road sign for the small town of Battle came into view. It was scraped and scratched; someone had daubed meaningless black lines across it in either paint or marker pen. Battle was more like a village than a town, with a few shops, two pubs and a sub-post office counter at the rear of a newsagent. It was exactly the kind of place they needed to heal their wounds; a quiet, almost lazy backwater where everyone knew everyone else’s business but nobody really bothered to interfere.

More importantly, it was a million miles away from the city—if not figuratively, then at least metaphorically. Things moved slower in the country; the people cared little about your past, and even less about your present. He and his family could be outsiders, and now they would relish that sense of alienation. It was a different type of segregation to that found in the city, and one they could use to their advantage.

He began to recognize small sights and markers: a length of tumbledown stone wall, a sign for a farm selling fresh eggs and other produce, a drainage ditch that ran under the road but did not reappear at the opposite side. Soon, he knew, would appear the access road to the house. He was surprised at how quickly, and how deeply, it was starting to feel like home.

“Nearly there now,” he said, waiting for the road to lurch toward them around the next bend. He slowed the car, taking the curve smoothly, and bumped over the slight raised area at the side of the carriageway before shifting down a gear to take the access road.

The road climbed slowly, and if he was honest, it was barely a road at all, more of a dirt track upon which someone had thrown some wood shavings to absorb the surface water. The Volvo’s engine whined a little, but managed the steep climb with ease, and within less than a minute the car was cresting the rise and the house leapt up to meet them.

“I forgot how nice it is,” said Sarah.

“Yeah,” agreed Molly. “It is. It really is.”

Even Connor managed a muted response from somewhere at the back of his throat.

“Whose car is that?” Robert was suddenly wary. They were expecting no visitors, and not even his solicitor knew the exact date of their return from the camping trip.

“Is it the estate agent?” Sarah sounded hopeful, too hopeful, as if she were pleading with him to affirm her query.

It was an old car—a Ford Cortina—with mud caking the tyres and the wings, and deep grazes in the front bumper. The windscreen was tinted, and even from this distance Robert could see it was coated in a layer of dirt and dead insects, with tracks cut through the mess by the windscreen wipers. It was a dirty car, a vehicle that did not look cared for or well-maintained. The dirt ran deeper than the bodywork. He was certain whoever drove this vehicle was nobody he knew, or wanted to know.

He pulled up on the wide gravel drive, setting the handbrake and turning off the engine. He shifted his gaze from the filthy car to the house, and noted the curtains and blinds were all open. He had pulled them all shut before locking up the place; he was as sure of this as he was of the fact that there had been no car in the drive when they left for their trip.

“Stay here,” he said, opening the door and stepping out onto the gravel. Stones crunched loudly, as if attempting to signal his arrival. “I’ll check this out.”

As he walked slowly and cautiously toward his new home, a place where he had hoped to silence the terrors that cried out to him at night, a single curtain twitched in a downstairs room and a pale face appeared briefly at the window before moving away.

11:05
A.M.

Robert kept his pace even as he approached the front porch, refusing to betray his fear to either his family in the car, or whoever was occupying his house. Surely there was a rational explanation for all this; perhaps the estate agent had employed a cleaner to get the house ready for their return from the Lakes.

Yes, that must be it. A cleaner.

Deep down inside him, where he wrestled with demons, the truth fought to be heard. There was no cleaner, and the agent knew nothing about whoever had parked their filthy little car on his drive.

Robert paused at the outer door to the porch, taking a breath and adjusting his footing. For some reason it seemed important to solidify his grip on the world, and he curled his toes inside his shoes as if he were trying to grasp the dirt through the thin leather soles. He’d started using this technique when Sarah was in the hospital. He found it helped root him into the moment.

He reached inside his pocket and grasped the set of keys he had been carrying since taking possession of the house. On it were keys for the front porch, the inner front door, the back and side doors, and the garage, which was situated at the back of the main building. He held the keys for a moment before pulling them out of his pocket, as if he needed to convince himself of their reality before allowing them to be seen.

He took the key (marked with a yellow sticker) and pushed it into the lock. The key jammed halfway in, and even when he jiggled it, rocking it from side to side, it was apparent the key did not fit the aperture. He took out the key, checked the sticker. Yes; yellow for the front door, blue for the back, green for the side and black for the garage. He tried the key a second time but it jammed again.

Suddenly the inner door was jerked open and a smiling man slipped out onto the small porch. The man was around average height, with broad shoulders and muscled arms. He had a small potbelly, but looked otherwise in pretty good shape, and old blue tattoos struggled to show themselves through the thick hairs on his forearms. He looked like a man who did physical work, as part of a road crew, or lifting heavy bins to tip their contents into a refuse wagon.

The man was wearing a T-shirt that said I
’M
T
HE
B
OSS
and a pair of faded denim jeans. On his feet were a pair of scuffed work boots, the laces undone and hanging loose, and the jeans were turned up an inch at the bottom. His hair was cut very short, almost a skinhead, and for some reason Robert noted that it was very thick, unlike his own thinning thatch.

The man reached out and opened the outer door. His hands were huge, the fingers as thick as sausages. His smile did not falter; his eyes were small and dark, and the smile did not touch them.

“Can I help you?” said the man, remaining just inside the porch. His boots had left dirt on the mat, and Robert winced at the sight of it.

“I think,” said Robert, “I should be asking you the same question.” He tried to smile but it would not come; his lips refused to twist into the required position. “You’re in my house, after all.”

The man’s brow furrowed. He looked around him, putting on what Robert thought was a rather theatrical display, and then shrugged his wide shoulders. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you mean.” His voice was deep, slow, with the hint of a harsh regional accent—was it northeastern? Robert could not be sure, but he classed it as the kind of unmodified working-class accent heard on a building site rather than one you might come across in a city center office. The man definitely looked like a manual laborer, with his big hands and his faded tattoos.

“Listen, I’m not being funny, but…well, you’re in my house.” What else was he supposed to say? This situation was so absurd, so unexpected, that he simply did not know how to deal with it. “My house,” he repeated, hoping it might sink in.

“Sorry, mate, but I bought this place a few weeks ago. This is
my
house, and I’ll thank you to stop pissing about and tell me why you tried to stick your key in my lock.” The man’s smile turned salacious, as if he and Robert were sharing a private and slightly dirty joke. Then he glanced at the Volvo, and at Robert’s family encased within its thin shell, and the joke turned sour.

Robert took an involuntary step back, onto the drive, and was shocked by the sound of gravel crunching underfoot. “I…listen, I don’t know who you are, or what you’re doing here, but could you please get out of my house?”

A woman appeared behind the man in the porch. She had bleached blonde hair, light blue eyes. She was wearing a shirt that was open to the solar plexus and a short, tight black skirt that accentuated her hard-muscled legs. Beneath the shirt, Robert could see her white bra against tanned skin, and he suddenly wondered what kind of knickers, if any at all, she was wearing under the skirt.

“What’s going on, Nate?” Her voice was similar to the man’s: low, husky, with a trace of an accent.

“Dunno, pet. This bloke seems to think we’re in his house.” A look passed between them, quick as a lightning flash and dark as storm clouds. There was humor in that glance, and something more, something deeper and much too complex for Robert to assess in such a short space of time.

“Does he, now?” She glared at Robert, her hands going to her hips, sharp elbows bent and shoulders rising. “Does he really?” Her orangey tan seemed to flare; the dark roots in her bottle-blonde hair went a shade darker; her pale eyes widened. A small red tongue flicked between her lips, like that of a hungry reptile.

Robert was disturbed to find he found her attractive.

“I think there’s been some kind of misunderstanding here. I’ve owned this house for about three weeks. If you’ll just let me inside, I can clear all this up in a few moments.” Robert hated the sound of his voice: it sounded small, polite, polished. It was the voice of his fear.

“Fuck off, mate. This was funny at first, but now you’re starting to bore me.” The man—Nate—stepped down from the porch, flexing his hands. The smile was gone, replaced now by an expression Robert could not read.

“Rob?” Sarah’s voice punctured the moment, and Robert turned to face the car as she walked toward him, a look of puzzled concern on her face. He could not help but notice her hands were clenched into fists.