Nyctophobia (27 page)

‘Callie, are you going to be all right?’

Shivering and soaked in the dark, I realized I must have looked more frightened than even I supposed. ‘It’s something Senora Condemaine and I share,’ I explained. I pointed to the high-backed chair by the fireplace. ‘That’s where I first saw her. He was behind her, and one of the children was running around on all fours – he or she, it was impossible to tell – seemed to have become feral. It was as if they were all in the most terrible torment.’

‘Well, wouldn’t they have been?’ said Celestia. ‘Elena Condemaine lost her husband in a devastating battle. She tried to feed her children alone and failed. Did you even know she buried them in the garden?’

‘The grave markers are all eroded. It’s impossible to tell what’s really there.’

‘I imagine all Francesco’s money was tied up in this monstrous overwrought house, so when her pride finally crumbled she threw herself on the mercy of the villagers. But they had always treated her with hatred and suspicion, and she was rebuffed. Her children were starving, so she took their lives in an act of mercy.’

‘My God,’ I cried, ‘To reach the point whereby killing your children was the only alternative to watching them starve to death – weren’t they all in Hell?’

The idea struck me just as lightning sharded the room, but even as it crackled and burned away the thought was lost. For the briefest moment I had understood, and now it was gone.

But the lightning was still here. The room was shining with electrical energy. As I watched, the rugs burst into vivid blue-edged colours, the wood renewed itself and appeared brand new, the dolls regained their lustre, their hair and clothes shining. The dust was falling from the glittering crystal chandelier, and there was even a fire burning in the grate.

Everything was as it had once been. The searing light blurred my vision, the roar of the storm filled my ears, and I saw…

‘Don’t you understand,’ Celestia was saying, ‘don’t you see what happened here, what’s still happening?’ Her mouth continued to move but I could no longer understand the words, and then she was hurling the dolls into the fire and moving to the mantelpiece, sweeping the glass and china from it, shouting and gesticulating wildly as I tried to understand what she was telling me.

‘The Society,’ she was saying, ‘they blinded you to the truth. It was for your protection!’

And as she stood beside the fire shouting at me, it suddenly popped and belched, the flames enveloping the hem of her dress, flickering over it to catch a light to the end of the scarf. The material was wet but that didn’t stop it from burning; it caught immediately, and her shouts turned to screams as she tried in vain to slap away the flames. I did nothing because after all there could be no fire there, so what I was experiencing was merely what I had seen so often before, some kind of synaptic overload, a parlour trick of bright colours and frightening noises, a short-circuit of my faculties, and all I could do was push back and away from the absurd spectacle of Celestia engulfed in some kind of spectral inferno, rushing out of the room, closing the door behind me and locking it, and covering my eyes and ears with my hands until it had gone away, all gone away, and there was nothing more that could deceive my senses.

I stayed against the door until all the noise and light had gone, and only then, when my racing heart had returned to something like its normal pace, did I allow myself to open the door again.

Nothing on earth would make me go all the way back inside, but I had to make sure I had not shut her in. I thought of Liana, the little girl who had become trapped in the room, and wondered for one awful moment if I had somehow done the same to her, but remembered that I couldn’t have because I’d been outside on the lawn, and we had both entered together.

I pushed the door wide and looked in dread. The room was still exactly as I had left it. Even the dust appeared to have settled over our footprints once more. Then where was she? Everything was dark and faded again, just as it had always been, the cobwebs on the chandelier, the dolls in their places, the china and glass all in place, the grate cold and empty.

And there was no sign of Celestia anywhere.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

The Screen

T
HE DINNER TABLE
lay as it had before, set with two places, the cod and tortilla eaten, knives and forks set aside, the wine glasses half-emptied. Celestia had carefully moved her chair back and there it stood accusingly, turned slightly, her maroon cardigan draped over one arm as proof that she had been there.

My head throbbed. The power appeared to have been cut off, but as the table had been lit with several fat white church candles the ambient light remained. I returned to the connecting door and listened, my hands shaking, but there was only silence.

I rang Celestia’s mobile, but the line was filled with electronic scratches and clicks. Although I hated doing so, I ending up Skyping Mateo again. The six hour time difference meant that he was still probably at the New York office, and I knew he’d be working on his laptop. This time he answered at once. He was wearing his smartest blue suit and tie.

‘Hey, I was about to call you,’ he said, tearing himself away from his spreadsheets. ‘How’s it going?’

‘We’re having a storm,’ I said, trying to work out what on earth I was going to say without alarming him.

‘Too bad, it’s a beautiful autumn day here.’ He panned the screen around and I realised his window was high above the Manhattan streets. ‘Noisy, though. Police cars, taxis, the usual. After Spain it just seems so damned intense. I can’t wait to get back.’

‘I was having dinner with Celestia and I’ve lost her,’ I said lamely, as if she were a hat or a pair of glasses I’d absently set aside.

‘What do you mean?’

‘She was here and now she’s gone – it’s as if the house swallowed her up.’

‘Hon, I’m having trouble hearing you. Is that rain?’

‘Sorry, it’s really coming down now.’

‘You mean she went home in that weather?’

‘I don’t think so. She just – disappeared.’

‘You know she’s a little on the crazy side, don’t you?’

‘I know, but she was fine. We went into the other drawing room –’

‘Why would you do that when you know it freaks you out?’

‘I just wanted Celestia to see it for herself. She’s only been here once before and didn’t get a good look. Nothing strange had really had happened before then.’

‘Nothing strange has happened now, Callie. It’s all in your imagination.’ His impatience was starting to show. ‘Listen, I can’t stay on long, I’m running late for a meeting and I have to get this done before I go in. How’s Bobbie?’

‘Fine. She’s on a sleepover with her friend Yolanda. She’ll be back first thing in the morning.’

‘Cool – listen, is Rosita there with you?’

‘No, she’s taken the night off. ’

‘Then I guess you found Celestia.’

‘Why?’

‘Honey, there’s someone standing behind you.’

My skin prickled with needles of ice. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Right behind you, over your left shoulder.’

I slowly turned, and saw her.

Lank hair hung over her downturned face. She wore the ragged shift covered in the dirt of a century, which her withered body barely inhabited. I couldn’t bring myself to seek out her eyes, and jumped away, knocking the laptop from the table. It crashed to the floor as she moved toward me, her fingers connecting with my arm, the clutch not of a corpse or a phantom, not connected to anything in the volumes of ghost stories I’d read as a child, but a physical entity of cold flesh, sinew and bone, somehow both alive and dead at once.

I screamed and shoved my way aside, slamming back against the table, filled more with revulsion than fear, my hands before my face as if trying to beat away invasion. I know I fell over the chair leg and landed heavily, heard thunder and breaking plates, Rosita’s best china, and I remember that when I looked up the creature had gone, because lightning was flooding the room with such brilliance that it could not survive, only retreat to the dark.

The storm had freed it, but had also prevented it from fulfilling its intention.

I lay on the floor, terrified, not prepared to move until I was sure it had vanished. The silence was broken by Mateo’s voice. Turning, I saw him on the laptop screen.

‘Callie, what’s happening? What the hell is going on? Are you all right? Darling, for God’s sake talk to me!’

The laptop’s screen had snapped clean away from the keyboard. Its cable had come out of the wall. There was nothing left that could possibly make it work, but there it was, the glowing screen with Mateo still talking, unconnected. As I picked up the screen, it fuzzed and fragmented, turning black, the sound phasing and echoing away, leaving only the light of the guttering candles and the patter of falling rain.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

The Disappearance

T
HREE WEEKS AGO
I would have found a way to justify the events of that night, to write off Celestia’s sudden departure as a quirk of her impulsive nature, to put the computer screen’s activity down to some anomaly caused by the storm’s electrical charge, to dismiss the poor creature’s reappearance due to my heightened imagination.

But now I could no longer do any of these things. A few minutes later the power was restored and I was able to move once more, freed from the restraining terror of the dark. I cleared away the shattered plates, loaded the dishwasher, tidied the room, made everything normal, then tried Celestia’s mobile again, only to find it still out of order. Eventually I went to bed.

In the morning I made sure that there was no sign of disturbance left in the house. I called once more, knowing that it would be too early to get an answer from her anyway, and got the broken line, as if the mobile was ringing somewhere beyond time and space.

I composed myself as best as I could and waited for Bobbie’s return, listening to her excited account of the sleepover when she came charging in.

‘Where’s Yolanda’s mother?’ I asked. ‘Didn’t she drop you off?’

‘She just brought me to the gates. Jerardo didn’t come and open them, so I had to walk up the drive. Where is he?’

‘Where is anyone?’ I muttered.

A few minutes later Jerardo appeared with an apologetic look on his wizened face, and offered to drive us into Gaucia. In the village, Bobbie sat on the wall reading while I attempted to find Celestia. Nobody had seen her. For want of something else to do, I tried to get my laptop repaired. The man who ran the hardware shop doubled as Gaucia’s IT engineer, and told me it would have to be sent away to the Apple concession in Marbella.

We walked back through the square, but found Celestia’s usual table empty. Lola was nowhere to be found. The village seemed unusually quiet, as if everyone had been instructed to stay indoors and keep away from us. I thought of looking in on Jordi, but the library doors were locked shut.

The strange part was that I was desperate to get back to the house again, to stay there in the warm autumn sunlight where I knew I would be safe. By the time we returned Rosita was back, and I had never been so pleased to see her. As she cleaned the kitchen and tutted over the broken plates I thought I had successfully hidden in the bin, she kept glancing over as if wondering what on earth had got into me.

With my work on the book abandoned, I sat in the atrium with Bobbie and we played silly word games until it was time for lunch, and nothing could dent my feeling of euphoria. I no longer cared what had happened the night before, or where Celestia might have gone. I only knew that I belonged here. Mateo was due back from New York in two days’ time, and I decided to tell him that I was setting the book aside. There was too much to do now, and anyway, the house would always be here. I could tackle the project once Bobbie had started boarding school.

Just before sunset I walked down to the little cemetery. Flowers of sunlight patched the grass, giving the glade a magical appearance. The ground had dried and there was no sign of the previous night’s disturbance, not so much as a broken twig. I tried to recall the exact spot where we had seen Elena dragging the body, but the evidence had, as usual, been erased. I supposed Jerardo and I could dig up the ground, but what would it reveal after a hundred years, a bone or two? And what was there to gain from such an action?

Celestia was not to be found.

Two days later we had a visit from the Gaucia police, who were looking into her disappearance. They had received contradictory reports; she had either been seen or not been seen at the café in the square. She had bought provisions from Maria’s store, but no-one could actually remember when. One of the women swore she had passed her pulling a wheeled suitcase, looking as if she was going to the airport, but perhaps that was just wishful thinking. Lola thought she had seen her on the afternoon after she visited me, but couldn’t be sure. There was no clue as to her whereabouts, and as nobody had any idea of her movements on Saturday night, I decided not to tell them that she had come to me for dinner, knowing that it would only complicate matters. She had not used the only local taxi, because the driver had been at his step-brother’s wedding. The police were checking car services in Marbella, without much luck.

I tried to understand what could have happened, but drew a blank. I remembered the storm, the lightning putting out the local power grid, my panic in the dark causing me to hallucinate, but that was all.

Celestia had definitely been seen in the town square shortly after lunchtime on the day she came over to visit, because she had told Eduardo that she was not feeling very well and was going to go for a walk. The assumption was now that she had headed off to the cliff path, the only area near the village that had any shade, and had collapsed somewhere. The walking routes had all been thoroughly searched, but no body had been found. The problem was that a river ran in the ravine below, and at this time of the year its swollen waters and fierce current flushed freshwater out on the coast somewhere east of Marbella. It was therefore assumed that she might have drunkenly fallen in and been lost to the sea. It had happened a number of times in the past, most recently in 1997, when a tourist from Dortmund had alighted to take a photograph of the eagles and his feet had slipped on the scree, sending him tumbling into the gorge. The other accepted idea was that she had taken off without telling anyone – so unreliable, the English – and would turn up in a week or so.