Nyctophobia (17 page)

There was another already on my arm, and it had left behind a thin streak of blood. I yelped and picked off the slippery grey creature, examining it. As I did, it stretched and swung around, trying to bite me. I was surprised at the speed with which it moved. I could see two sets of tiny hooks like pin-points, set on either end of its body. When I dropped it onto the sink it flipped over, end to end, like a Slinky. It climbed the sheer sides of the bowl in seconds and disappeared into a wet corner.

I had never seen a leech up close before. You expect anything that looks like a slug to move slowly. I placed my finger above it and watched as it stretched and waved about like an antenna, desperate to reach me. There was something grotesque about its obviousness, as if I was automatically expected to forgive its uncontrollable thirst for blood.

I knew that they produced an anaesthetic in their bite so that they could continue to feed from their host without being noticed. They also had an anticoagulant in their saliva, so they could carry on feeding until they were fully gorged. Then they would drop from the body to seek water, in search of a new host.

I wasn’t at all squeamish, but I decided to stay the hell out of the bathroom. Shutting the door behind me and making sure that my bare arms were clear, I made my way back down the stairs.

This time when I entered the drawing room, I noticed other differences to its counterpart; there was a cheap pewter music box with a ballerina, some ugly gilt-framed landscapes, the brown craquelure of their canvases rendering them completely indecipherable, a standard lamp with dusty orange tassels. A modern steel wine rack had been set in place by Mateo. In the corner was what appeared to be a moulting stuffed dog, some kind of terrier – I was spending more time in the room than I’d intended, and now I noticed how far away the door seemed. I presumed it was because of the shuttered windows that I could no longer hear the birdsong or the ticking of the clocks.

A bubble of panic began to form itself and rise the surface.

The silence
. Suddenly I knew I was no longer alone. Someone else had come into the room. My heart rate was increasing. I took a step back toward the door and the light, all the time peering forward, trying to see into the blurred far corners.
This is absurd,
I told myself,
there’s nothing here that can hurt you. It’s just your imagination. Get a grip.

As I dug out the little LED torch and turned it on, the clasp holding it to my house keys opened and they fell off the ring onto the floor. I knelt and felt around for them under the table that stood to my left, but there was only dust. I tried not to think of whatever had been on the other end of the cotton thread.

My fingers spread out, feeling only furry dust. Then I touched something.

Cold, dead flesh.

Someone else’s hand.

It grabbed my fingers tight and pulled. Screaming in fright, I pulled back even harder, but it wouldn’t let go. I pulled with all my weight, and the fingers released me, slithering damply away over my hand.

Moments later I had grabbed the keys and was back on my feet running for the door, but the thing was also getting to its feet from under the table. Now I saw it rising in the penumbra, a creature consolidated from the very shadows; a ragged figure with a gaunt grey neck and collar-bone, and arms so thin they might have been branches. It wore an oval mask made of fine white china, on which were painted narrow red lips in a high-curved smile, and rouge spots where the cheekbones should be. It was held in place by aged leather straps, passed through slots at the sides of the mask. Ragged, unkempt tufts of hair stuck out from above its ears.

The poor thing moved awkwardly, like someone old and in terrible pain, its knees together, elbows out, every step taken as if passing over broken glass. No ghost this but bone and sinew, like old footage of someone in a concentration camp, helpless and utterly lost.

I knew I should stay and confront it, to understand why it had picked me, but I couldn’t. Panic overwhelmed me and I ran for the open door and the light and safety, but I had to stoop to remove the rolled-up TV guide from under the door and I was suddenly sure that it was right behind me.

I lashed back and fell out into the light, and there right outside was Bobbie, home already, her face enquiring, and as I crashed into the child I was convinced that the thing would try to follow me out into the sliver of shadow cast by the open connecting door, but I had already fallen against it, shutting the creature back inside, and was fighting to turn the key in the lock, to hear the tumblers fall into place and seal the that dark soul in its prison once more.

To stay forever in the dark, away from us.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The Proof

‘Y
OU KNOW WHAT
happened,’ I insisted angrily. ‘You saw it too.’

Bobbie stared back at me, mute and uncomprehending.

‘But there are scratches on my hand, see?’ I held up my right hand so that Bobbie could examine the scarlet stripes on its back. ‘You think I did these to myself?’

‘You did the ones on your arms,’ she replied with calm logic.

‘Where did you hear that?’

‘Daddy told me.’

‘That was different, it was a long time ago and I was very upset, and Daddy shouldn’t have told you such a thing.’

‘I asked him. My daddy doesn’t lie.’ The way she said
my daddy
caught at my throat. I wanted to say,
But this was from the thing in the room, it grabbed me just like it grabbed the thread.
I didn’t want to frighten her, I swear, but I had to know the truth. ‘You did see it, didn’t you?’

‘There wasn’t anything there.’

‘It was right behind me! It tried to come out but I shut the door.’

‘I didn’t see anything.’

I grabbed her shoulders. ‘You’re lying. You know you saw something and you won’t admit it. Why won’t you tell the truth?’

‘Stop it!’ Bobbie put her hands to her ears. ‘There wasn’t anything there!’ She ran out into the garden. I let her go, knowing that she was safe so long as she stayed in the sunlight. Whatever it was that inhabited that room, it was unable to leave the sunless part of the house. I was sure it wasn’t alone. There were others. That was where they lived, where they had always lived. But why was I the only one who could see anything? Why hadn’t Bobbie seen it as well?

My dream of Mateo’s terrible death, perhaps that had only been a dream but this was real. The scratches on my hand proved it, surely.

I rose and turned to find Mateo coming into the house armed with shopping bags. ‘I’m sorry, but can you two play your games a little more quietly today?’ he said. ‘I could hear your screams from the driveway and I’ve got to get on with the accounts this morning.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, slipping my hand behind my back. It was the same gesture I had used when hiding my scarred wrist.

He stopped. ‘Is everything okay?’

‘Of course. Why shouldn’t it be?’

‘I have to get everything updated before the London trip, so – you know.’ He smiled and patted the air with his palm. ‘Just keep it down for today. If this one goes well I was thinking maybe you should come with me for the next one. You could catch up with your friends.’

My friends.

I hadn’t told him that half of them had already started to forget me. The people with whom I used to work all seemed too busy or preoccupied with their own lives to return my calls. I was the one who had got the handsome new husband and the beautiful house. They were still single and going to work in the rain, trying to pay their credit card bills, fighting off wage cuts and redundancies. I had expected to miss London more but I didn’t, not really. If I was honest with myself, the last thing I wanted to do was stand around in crowded bars listening to their online dating horror stories.

Besides, I was accumulating a horror story of my own – something was crawling out of my head, ignited by a condition of the house that I could sense but not understand.

Mateo gave my forehead a light kiss, clearly still thinking about the problems in his order books. ‘Call me when dinner’s ready?’ he asked. ‘I get a little buried inside myself when I’m trying to do the figures. Maths was never my strong point.’

I watched him head back upstairs, so solid and sure of his place in the world, and wished I could be the same. I was being shaken out of the light and into darkness. And I still had no idea why or how.

Outside, the sun was low in the sky, trimming the tops of the cork trees with gold. Bobbie sat on the lawn, surrounded by her books and pencils, scribbling with angry, studied preoccupation. I knelt down beside her, but when I reached out to touch her shoulder she flinched and moved away.

‘Bobbie, I’m really sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean to frighten you like that.’

‘You didn’t frighten me,’ said Bobbie stiffly. ‘You frightened yourself.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘By going into the dark. You don’t
like
being in the dark so why did you go in?’

‘How do you know I don’t like the dark?’

‘I heard you talking with Daddy.’

‘No,’ I admitted, ‘I don’t like it. I know there’s nothing to be afraid of really, it’s just a bunch of dusty little rooms. I have too much imagination. But I thought I could cure it by going in there a bit further each time, until I stopped imagining that there was anything to be scared of anymore.’

‘Why do you get scared of the dark?’

‘It was just something that happened a long time ago, honey. Maybe it was always there, I don’t know. But I can make it go away.’

‘Is that why you never learned to drive?’ Bobbie asked. ‘In case you got stuck in a tunnel?’

‘Maybe – I don’t know. But I never meant to shout at you like that, sweetie, and I never will again.’

Bobbie set down her pencil. ‘Promise?’

‘I promise.’ I hugged the girl to my chest, and everything felt good again. It would be good just so long as I dammed up my over-active imagination.

‘Off you go now,’ I said with false gaiety, ‘get those dirty hands washed ready for dinner. I’ll bring your stuff in.’ I watched as Bobbie scampered off into the house, and felt more ashamed than ever for allowing my fears to spill over in front of the girl who had accepted becoming my step-daughter without a single qualm.

I examined the nails of my left hand, looking for proof that I had scratched myself, but there was nothing. As I gathered up Bobbie’s books and pens, I realised I was avoiding the shadow-shapes of the surrounding bushes, as if there was something in them that could hurt me.

I started to head back to the house with my arms full but the books slid from under my elbow, falling onto the grass. As I knelt to pick them up, I found I was at the spot where I had imagined Mateo’s death. My fingers reached out to touch the grass, retracing the moment. Here he had fallen, here I had run to him, here I had slapped the hornets from his mouth and eyes – and here they had landed, Their segmented bodies had dried out now, but were still lying deep at the roots of the grass. I could touch them, feel them between the blades and the sun-hardened soil.

The hornets. Positive proof that
something
had happened.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The Enemy

T
WO DAYS LATER
, just before Mateo was going to London, I got another shock when my mother turned up virtually unannounced.

‘I’m in Malaga visiting a friend of Sandy’s about a new line of accessories,’ she explained on the phone. ‘I can be there in a couple of hours. I rented a car from Sixt, it’s a ridiculous little thing – why do Spaniards all have to be so short? – and I have to go almost right past your front door, apparently.’

I found it hard to imagine that Anne had even the vaguest idea of where we lived, but no doubt her rental was equipped with GPS. I knew that my mother would have a host of reasons that would prevent her from staying the night, but I offered anyway. ‘God no, darling, but bless you. I have to dash back, but I’ll stay for a spot of lunch. Can you manage that? Don’t go to any trouble, a bit of salad will be fine. Is Mateo with you?’

‘He’s going to be at a winery until about five,’ I said. ‘But if you stay you’ll see him, and Bobbie’s here.’

‘Oh dear, I suppose it’s always just the two of you during the day. Isn’t that lonely?’

‘Not really, there’s her tutor and the housekeeper, and the gardener.’

‘Heavens, quite the lady of the house. How times have changed. Are you managing? Not too much for you? Don’t tell me now, save all the news for when I see you. Won’t be long,
ciao
.’

I could feel myself becoming annoyed already. Anne knew which buttons to push and worked them mercilessly.
You can afford to be gracious,
I told myself,
she’s lonely and bitter and won’t stay for more than a few hours. You can survive her for that long.
But I called Mateo at the vineyard to warn him that she might still be here when he returned.

I spoke to Rosita and we hatched a plan for a summer salad with ham and chicken, the sort of bland non-Spanish food Anne secretly favoured, although Rosita insisted on adding
padron
peppers. The house was flower-bedecked and looked beautiful. My mother turned up just after noon in a canary-coloured Seat. She was dressed in a lacy, impractical white frock designed for someone considerably younger.

‘What a strange-looking house!’ she said, coming in and kissing the air in front of me. ‘With the cliff right at the back like that, and the funny little glass turret in the centre. But the planting’s lovely. I’d have thought it would all dry out around here. It must take an awful lot of upkeep.’

I took her on a truncated tour of the house, carefully avoiding the locked servants’ quarters, lingering instead on the furniture and paintings. I could tell she was pricing everything up as she walked about. I wanted Anne to be pleased for me, but knew that she was too selfish for that.

‘I hardly passed a single other car on the road,’ she said, feigning a fit of exhaustion. ‘It’s all so terribly barren and
desolate
. What on earth made Mateo pick such a lonely spot?’