The Banishing (13 page)

He was probably downstairs, still watching some cheap, late night TV show, or more than likely, he’d fallen asleep on the sofa. Something, a sense of unease crept over her. She strained her ears as she sat in the darkness of the bedroom, rain still splattering angrily against the windows beyond the thick, velvet curtains. She tried to hear movement, noise from downstairs.

Not knowing what Mark was doing was making her feel uneasy.

He was not just somebody to be wary of, now. He was somebody she was frightened of. Somebody who posed a real threat to her.

The man you marry today won’t be the man you’re married to in ten years.
Her mother’s voice echoed in her mind, and Melissa pulled back the duvet and stepped onto the thick, bedroom carpet. She grabbed her pink dressing gown and threw it over herself, trying to banish the goosebumps that began travelling along the length of her arms and back.

From cold. From fear.

Melissa stood by the bedroom door and pulled it open, then looked out into the hallway. She waited there, pensively, hesitantly, unsure of whether she should just creep back to bed and ignore Mark’s absence or go down to see what he was doing.

Somehow, illogical though it seemed to her, not knowing where he was meant she would not be able to switch off. She imagined him creeping around the house, waiting until he thought she was fully asleep, and then launching into his next assault. It was stupid. Probably unlikely, but in that very moment, Melissa didn’t think Mark was beyond doing something that stupid. Something nasty. Planned. Calculated. She couldn’t credit him with being a better man than that; not right now.

She tip-toed into the hallway and paused, again. Waited, listening. She could hear clearly, now; Mark was downstairs—she wasn’t sure whether he was in the lounge or kitchen—but he was definitely down there and definitely awake.

He was talking, again.

Talking to who?

Melissa suddenly felt wide awake. Her heart lurched into violent action.

She remembered the other day, when she had walked into the lounge to find Mark in that trance-like state, talking about blood. The memory made her shudder and recall the figures she had been seeing.

Ghosts?

Melissa shook her head, rubbing her hand along her forehead.

Back to bed? Or go down there and see what he’s doing?

She suddenly remembered the camcorder she had taken out of the cupboard earlier that day and her plan to try to record any of Mark’s increasingly weird behavior. Obviously, his violent outbursts would be for her eyes alone, but the weird trances, the speeches…if she could capture that, then maybe she could show Josh. It might give him more of an idea of what was happening to Mark. It might be a waste of time, but even if it was, she had nothing to lose. Not now. All she could do was try.

Melissa inched her way along the black, shadowy hallway and back into the bedroom. Without switching on the light, she went to her side of the bed, fumbling around until her hand found the thick, metallic block that was the camcorder.

She grabbed it and stood up. She pressed the power button, and the light came on, the screen next to it blinking to life.

“Going to make you see what you’re doing,” she whispered to herself in the darkness. If Mark truly was in denial about the…person he had become, then maybe watching himself on camera like that might bring him back to reality.

She went quickly to the hallway and toward the stairs. She wanted to be quick. Her heart still hammered persistently, drumming its warning that her body wanted to get out of the situation she was heading into.

Danger.
Her body warned
. Get away.

She crept down the stairs, and was oddly relieved to hear Mark’s deep, solemn voice from below. She saw that the lounge light was on, the yellow light spilling out into the hallway. A shadow moved, meaning Mark was walking, was up and about.

Melissa crept down to the downstairs hallway and stood there silently. She checked that the camcorder was on standby, ready to record if Mark did anything...out of the ordinary.

She smiled at the stupidity of the thought; was
anything
that Mark did lately ordinary? He had moments of calm, moments where she saw the old Mark shining through, but increasingly he was completely irrational. He’d become somebody she barely recognized.

She moved as quietly as she could, aware that if Mark saw her watching him, he would probably explode and hurt her more than she cared to imagine. She inched along the wall until she was at the mouth of the lounge and looked in. Her body hidden, only her face peered into the room.

Mark was sitting on the sofa. Frozen, like a statue. He was sitting forward. Rigid. His hands on his knees. His legs were awkward sticks in front of him, like logs of useless wood. His face, turned upright, stared out into the lounge. It was his eyes that scared her, though. From where Melissa stood, she could see they were dead eyes. Unseeing.

Melissa carefully lifted the camcorder and pressed the “record” button. Noiselessly, the small hand-held camera began capturing the scene in the room.

She waited, the camera tilted toward Mark as he sat there, his body stiff, frigid. Suddenly, she remembered the figure that had been travelling across the room, spilling its shadow across the light in the downstairs hallway.

Mark wasn’t moving at all. Who had it been? Or had he only just this moment began sitting this way? The thought seemed unlikely to her somehow; Mark had the look of someone who had been rooted to the spot for hours. Even his chest barely rose with the shallow breaths he was taking. He wasn’t even aware of her presence, watching him from the edge of the doorway. He was out of his mind. Not sharing the time and space Melissa now existed in.

Unease, anxiety replaced the fear she felt moments ago.

Had she imagined the shadow? Had Mark been pacing only moments ago? Why had he stopped talking?

Melissa waited, desperate to capture some kind of evidence. Evidence to back up her own beliefs about something being desperately wrong with him, or proof for a doctor if she decided to call one. She didn’t know, but she wanted to do it. Felt it was a good idea.

She waited.

The camera—still recording—focused in on Mark, and she saw movement.

Mark was nodding his head, as if in agreement. As if he was hearing something that she wasn’t. She shivered.

Still staring ahead, Mark parted his lips and began to speak.

Melissa wanted to get closer, to hear, but scared of being seen, she remained fixed where she was. Instead, she panned in closer to Mark with the camera.

Double-checking that it was recording, she waited and watched.

“I know it’s a good thing. I know that,” Mark said, his voice very quiet, and the words stumbling out in a broken, detached language. His eyes still stared ahead, vacant. “I know it is. I’m doing it, aren’t I? You wanted more blood, didn’t you, and you got it. You must have seen, you must have seen it. Of course, there will be more. You and I will see to that.”

The scalp beneath Melissa’s hair prickled as if icy fingers were running through her hair. She shivered.
He is talking about me. Blood again.

She felt unsteady but tried to settle the camera back on Mark.

“Dead. Dead.” The two words pierced the air like daggers, and Melissa wanted to turn and run, to get away.
What the hell was he hearing?
Who
the hell was he hearing?

“
Not much time?
Why
? Why does it have to be so soon?” Mark, who hadn’t moved an inch since she began filming, still stared ahead to the center of the lounge, his eyes unblinking. “I told you I’d do it, didn’t I? Are you saying I don’t keep my word? I keep my fucking word.” Despite the angry tint to the words, Mark’s voice remained flat, low, monotone.

Melissa took a deep breath. She had to show this to Josh tomorrow. Was Mark psychotic, now? Would he end up in a psychiatric ward? She clenched her hands so tightly that they hurt against the camera she held.

“I know you want more and for it to really hurt. I know you like it. You like suffering, don’t you? Aren’t I doing enough?” Mark’s face screwed into a tight mask, and he seemed to her to be close to tears. His voice seemed more animated now, pleading.

Melissa resisted the urge to run to Mark. She flipped the camera shut, and as quietly as she could, ran up the stairs. She was frightened Mark was…back to normal…that he would snap out of whatever mindset he was locked into and see her there, watching.

She reached the bedroom, shrugged off her robe and placed it at the end of the bed where she had left it earlier. She slid beneath the duvet and pulled it over her body.

After a few moments, when she realized Mark was not coming upstairs, that he was—for all she knew—still talking to whoever it was he was hearing, she lifted the camcorder and switched it on.

She rewound the tape to the beginning and searched for the place where she had begun filming in the lounge. The image of Mark sitting rigidly on the sofa suddenly filled the camera, and she pressed “play”.

The image that slid into view from the edge of the lounge made her scream. Moments later, she heard the footsteps of Mark running upstairs toward her.

Chapter Sixteen

When Mark left the bedroom, assured that Melissa had simply woken from a nightmare, she scrambled under the foot of the bed and grabbed the camera, again. She switched it back on and watched.

She narrowed her eyes onto it and felt sickened at the sight of what she was seeing. She was seeing it; she hadn’t imagined it.

There, in the center of the lounge, walking up and down, was the blurry, smudged dark figure of a man. She hadn’t seen anybody there with her own eyes, and she knew that Mark had been alone.

The shadow of a man was there. Moving. Caught on camera. The being who was contacting Mark. Changing him.

So, Mark wasn’t crazy? Mark is really hearing this...thing? Melissa felt cold with shock. She knew that things had been happening in the house, and she had seen the figure of a man in the lounge herself a few nights ago.

Then, there had been the woman in her kitchen, covered in blood.

Melissa knew, instinctively, that whatever had gotten hold of Mark, whatever thing, whatever being, that black shadow really was, had something to do with the change in her husband.

It had to be. It had to be that way. As crazy as the thoughts even felt in her head, Melissa knew on some level that there was truth in that realization. Surely the truth was there in front of her own eyes, now. On camera, she had proof. Confirmation.

Was Mark even aware of what the…thing…was doing to him? What
was
it telling him to do?
Who
was it?

A million questions flooded her mind and sent sparks of fear through her blood. She had been jolted into a reality that, until recently, she was sure never existed.

What was going on? Mark had changed, but she had been seeing things, too. Something was happening in their home. Suddenly, thoughts flared into life. Hadn’t things started to go bad when they moved there, a year back? Into the house. Wasn’t that when things had become really awful?

Something inside the house.

What could she do? What do you do about shadows in your living room and ghosts in your kitchen? Melissa bolted upright in the bed, frightened and confused. What did any of this mean? Who do you go to when your husband is having conversations with people who aren’t really there? Or at least
shouldn’t
be there?

Melissa felt helpless. Mental illness would have been easier to deal with than this. Or was she ill, too? She sighed, staring down at the camera.

The black, smudged figure moved, flitting about the room. It moved like it was gliding across the floor, in fast, pressing movements.

No, she wasn’t mad. This was real.

Melissa switched off the camera, pushing it beneath the bed and lowering herself under the sheets.

She had more questions than answers, now. Her mind felt like a vacuum, and she was frightened of what that vacuum might be filled with if she learned more of what was going on under the roof of her home.

After an hour, she fell into a light, dreamless sleep. Outside, the rain slowed down and the only noise was the voice of Mark, still talking steadily to the unknown entity in the room below. Even in sleep, she was scared of what Mark might be planning, colluding with, and she awoke several times with a jolt, expecting to see him standing over her, beside the bed.

* * * *

To show Mark or not? To show Josh? Sharon? Who?

Melissa poured herself a cup of coffee, heaped in lots of sugar and cream, and took it with her into the lounge. Mark was still upstairs, sleeping. She had heard him last night creeping up the stairs and climbing into the bed beside her.

She hadn’t opened her eyes, but she had felt him from across the bed. He was freezing cold, as if he had been standing outside in the rain for hours. He wasn’t even close to her, having nudged himself onto his side of the bed. He was facing the window, but still she felt the cold seep from his skin and permeate the air between them. Melissa had shivered, trying to pull herself further away from him, feeling the rise of goosebumps on her skin from the sudden change in temperature. It had kept her awake for a long time.