Nyctophobia (31 page)

It was no time to commune with ghosts. Grabbing the tall maroon velour curtains with both hands, I pulled as hard as I could. The ancient fabric tore, but most of it came down from the poles in cascades of dust. Behind them, the shutters opened easily. I moved onto the next window, tearing down the filthy curtains, attacking the wooden blinds and punching out the windows, until only one more room was left.

I looked about for the phantoms of the Condemaine family, but they were nowhere to be seen. I could only think that the light was driving them from the room.

Up here it was possible to let in more light because the cliff started to slope a little further away from the house, but I couldn’t loosen the shutters. Dragging a chair over to the window I pulled down one of the metal curtain rods and thrust it into the slats, cracking them apart. First a single ray of light angled across the wall, then another and another, driving out darkness in a matrix of luminescence.

I went back to the others and used the rod again, smashing the remaining slats away from the frames, completely flooding the room with afternoon sun. How shabby and faded everything looked in the dusty maelstrom, how desperate and impoverished! Coughing, my eyes streaming, covered in cobwebs and grime, I threw the curtain rod onto the floor and made my way back out.

Bobbie was standing on the landing with tears running down her face. I could see Senora Degadillo at the foot of the stairs, her whitened hands knotted together, her face unreadable.

‘You’ve ruined everything,’ Bobbie cried. ‘Don’t you see? You’ve ruined
everything
.’

‘What are you talking about? Where’s your father?’ I asked. She pointed back downstairs between sobs.

I ran down and all but slid into the drawing room, swinging on the door jamb, only to find myself in eclipsing light. Mateo was patiently and methodically closing our shutters, drawing our blinds.

‘Why are you doing that?’ I asked.

‘One side has to stay dark,’ he said, as if explaining something to a child. ‘Otherwise we’ll be destroyed.’

‘What are you talking about?’ His words made no sense. I started to back away as Bobbie arrived behind me.

‘You’ve broken the shutters,’ said Bobbie. ‘Where are they going to go?’

‘Well, they’ll have to come into this side.’ Mateo calmly pointed into the shadows, as if the answer was obvious.

‘Then you believe me?’ I asked. ‘Mateo, we can’t let them come in here, they can’t just take over our lives!’

Mateo remained surprisingly calm. ‘Darling, we have no choice in the matter,’ he said quietly.

‘No? You’re just going to let that poor diseased thing stay here with us?’ I said, pointing to the corner of the drawing room beside the high-backed chair,
our
drawing room, the chair on
our
side. Now I could see Elena Condemaine cowering behind it, her frail form half-bent in terror, like a cat that had been driven from one hiding place to another.

‘Don’t, Callie,’ said Mateo. ‘Please, you’re not thinking rationally. Just come back here and forget about all this. Let me finish making everything okay in here and we can go back to –’

‘To what, Mateo? No-one’s seen you at work. You didn’t go to Jerez. You didn’t go to New York. You didn’t see the doctor. You don’t go into town. Nor does Bobbie.’

‘No – no, of course we don’t,’ he replied, sounding confused. ‘How could we?’

‘But you can see her, can’t you? All of you?’ I jabbed my finger at Elena again. ‘You can all see Francesco’s wife right there, trying to hide in the shadows!’

‘I think you’re overwrought,’ said Mateo. ‘Let Rosita take you to the kitchen while Bobbie and I finish up here.’

Rosita tried to take my arm. ‘Please come, Senora Torres,’ she said. ‘I’ll boil some hot milk and makecinnamon chocolate.’

‘I’m not a fucking invalid,’ I shouted at her, ‘let go of me!’

Pulling free, I ran to the fireplace and the high-backed chair where Elena still cowered, turned aside in shame, her withered features hidden by the smiling china mask she was always forced to wear. I reached out and grabbed at her tattered grey dress, turning her around to face me.

I looked deep into her dark eyes.

And I saw.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

The Past

I
SAW THE
horse and cart that the young man drove through the whitewashed streets, rattling over the cobbled lanes under the cover of darkness. It was a Saint’s day, the festival of San Isidro, May the 15
^th
, and the roads were hung with bright cloth flags. In the square there was a bonfire and a platform for dancing, and around the edges were tables of food. Children ran everywhere, chasing after dogs and cats with fireworks, stamping on them to cause explosions.

I saw Francesco Condemaine speak with his cart-driver, Jerardo’s great-grandfather. The pair of them left the horse and slipped around the corner of the square, to where the smallest children ran with hoops. I saw the ragged little girls, three of them, not invited to join the others because their mother was a
puta
, their father a drunk.

I saw the men return with the wriggling hemp sack, tying it at their feet and placing it in the cart, the children’s screams lost under the deafening rounds of
fuegos artificiales,
the rockets and jumping jacks and Roman candles spitting tongues of flame over the squealing children and the parents who were watching the band.

I saw the wooden scaffolds of the nascent Hyperion House, the dusty piles of bricks, the workers’ dying bonfires, the uprooted rocks and stacks of planks. It was late now, and everyone else was at the fiesta. I watched as Francesco and the cart-driver carried the wriggling sack to the foundation pit and slit open the canvas, tipping its contents into the darkness.

I saw what they did to them.

I heard the clatter of their shovels as they later filled in the pit, working fast and without taking a breath, until rocks and soil replaced the hole and they could tamp the ground flat. I saw them carry the stones and drop them onto the earth, the start of Hyperion’s foundation.

I
RELEASED MY
hand in horror and she fell back. But she clutched at me once again…

I
SAW THAT
the whitewashed walls of the village were dirty now, the painted doors peeling and faded. Gaucia had fallen on hard times. Litter swilled through the rain-flooded streets. Two starving dogs were fighting at the corner, one tearing mouthfuls of flesh from the other’s hindquarters until it squealed and limped away, trailing spurts of blood.

I saw Elena Condemaine trudging through the closed-up town in the downpour, banging on each of the doors in turn, working her way along the street. As she approached, shutters closed and curtains were drawn. A small child watched from an attic until she was torn away by her mother and slapped, and the window bolted shut.

Elena dropped to her haunches in the gutter and cried bitter tears, but no-one dared to look out until she had moved on. At the edge of the square one shopkeeper threw her a hardened heel of bread, but she was not quick enough to catch it and it broke apart in the gutter, to be snatched away by the dogs.

She gathered the remaining scraps in the pockets of her skirt and continued blindly on, praying she might find something that would keep her children alive for just a few more days.

When she slipped inside the church of the Blessed Holy Virgin, she sought only to rest, but the priest twisted her arm behind her back and forced her outside, hurling her onto the steps and slamming the door behind her. She lay in the inundated gutter sobbing, knowing now that the lives of her children were beyond redemption.

They wanted nothing to do with her. Three children had been taken, three would now starve to death. God had answered their prayers and allowed their revenge.

I saw her forced attempts at gaiety, and the handfuls of sugar Elena used as a bribe to lure her three listless, sickly children into a merry game. She brought them to the back of the house, to the small patch of stones and rubble under which Gaucia’s own lost children lay ravaged and buried.

Here, she bade them kneel, demonstrating first how they should hold their positions. She blindfolded each in turn, whispering words of comfort, speaking of meeting with God’s good grace, and if the children suspected anything they did not cry out, because even now they trusted their mother.

When the three were lined up facing the cliff wall, she rose and walked behind them, taking the carving knife from her pocket. She started with one of the twins. Gently, lovingly, she tipping back his head, exposing his white throat, and swiftly drew the blade across it, curtaining blood onto his chest. He fell forward as gently as a sapling falls, with the faintest rustle, and lay still.

She moved onto the next and performed the same simple movement, sliding the knife over his exposed skin, parting the flesh so quickly that he had no time to cry. He, too, fell with the grace of a dying bird.

She was brought to her favourite, her youngest, her beautiful dark daughter Maria, and for the first time her nerve failed, and the knife stayed at her side. The girl waited, motionless, trusting. When nothing happened, she reached up and raised the blindfold from one eye, and saw what her mother was about to do.

With her eyes crushed shut, Elena had raised the knife above her daughter’s throat. When Maria saw the blade, she released a cry that cut into Elena’s very soul.

But it was too late to stop. Elena brought down her arm and did the deed, turning aside with a sob as her beloved, wasted little girl was released from the misery of existence.

She would have joined them, had planned it that way, but now the weight of her actions overtook her with the speed of a hurtling train and she howled to the sky, and her wits departed, never to return.

Soon she would gather up the bodies and take them inside, to be with her forever. To live with the worst sin any mother could commit.

I saw all this, and more.

My sight was marred by a shimmering veil of tears. The world rained. The ragged grey figure before me gently unclenched her bony fingers from around my wrist and turned her cruelly perfect face aside.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

The Decision

I
AWOKE ON
the striped sofa, under a blanket. It was dark. Candles guttered at either end of the darkened drawing room. The candlesticks had come from the other side, I was sure of that. Mateo and Bobbie sat solicitously, awaiting my return to consciousness.

I tried to raise my head but it ached so badly that I had to put it down again. I tried to speak, failed and tried again.

‘Do you want some water?’ Mateo asked gently.

I nodded. He went off and returned with a crystal carafe, holding my head up with one hand while he raised the glass to my lips with the other.

‘What happened?’ I asked.

‘Well, that’s kind of hard to say. You passed out and banged your head on the corner of the table. There didn’t appear to be any real damage but you concussed yourself. You’ve got a nasty bump there.’

I caught a glimpse of myself with the curtain rod, prising off the slats from the shutters. ‘Oh God, I smashed up the windows, didn’t I?’

Mateo gave a small laugh. ‘That you did, babe. Nothing we can’t get repaired. But you know something – first I think we should have a talk. Bobbie, why don’t you go to the kitchen and see how long dinner’s going to be?’

‘Okey doke.’ Bobbie rose and scampered off. It didn’t make sense. Everyone was being so pragmatic and unemotional.

‘I must have made a lot of noise,’ I said. ‘How come Rosita didn’t go crazy? She’s still here, isn’t she?’

‘Sure. She came running when she heard you but what could she do? Even I wasn’t about to stop you, not with that thing in your hands. You went a little whacko there for a while. Don’t worry about it. Jerardo and I will put everything back together. Soon you won’t be able to tell that there was ever any damage done to the house. It will be just like it always was.’

‘But I don’t want it to be like it always was, Mateo. I want to get rid of the other rooms.’

He sat on the edge of the sofa, lovingly massaging my knuckles with his fingers, clearly uncomfortable with what he was about to say.

‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, honey. You see, there have to be a few changes, just until we can get the place fixed up.’

‘What kind of changes?’ I pushed myself up on my left elbow and saw something that made no sense. There were no overhead lights on. Instead, clusters of candles sat on every flat surface. The room had shrunk, and the furniture was faded and dusty. The ceiling was too low.

‘Callie, listen to me –’

‘We’re in the wrong side! What have you done?’

‘They have to stay somewhere dark,’ said Mateo reasonably. ‘You broke the shutters in here, so we’ve shut out all the light in the other side. They’ll just stay there until we’ve done the repairs.’

‘Listen to what you’re saying, Mateo, this is madness.’ I threw off the blanket and climbed up from the sofa, fighting nausea. ‘I have to get out of here.’

‘All right, if that’s what you want.’

‘And I want you and Bobbie to come with me. We need to get away from this house. Can’t you see what it’s done to us? We can go to Marbella, just rent a room for the night while we figure out what to do. We can sell the place. I can get in touch with Julia and put it back on the market –’

‘I wish we could, but it’s not that simple.’

‘It is, Mateo. Bobbie can still start school on time and you can commute from the coast.’

‘We can’t come with you. We belong here now.’

‘You don’t know what you’re saying.’ I looked about the drawing room. Mateo had stacked the broken shutters neatly against the wall. Moonlight shone through the tops of the windows above the cliff edge. ‘I feel sick, I need some air,’ I said, heading for the door. He didn’t try to stop me.