MAY
From Part I: Reunions/Chapter 10
Andrea was unable to sleep, and after watching the hands of the bedside alarm clock tick away three hours, she decided a little over the counter medication was in order. She would be good for nothing if she didn’t get a decent amount of sleep.
She rose and slipped on her housecoat. The moon was a full, silver coin directly beyond her bedroom window and she decided to blame that cold, white light for her sleeplessness.
She pulled down the blinds and went into the bathroom. The house was cold, colder than usual at this late hour, so cold her feet were uncomfortably chilled on the bathroom floor, which was tiled in varying shades of blue mosaic squares. She hopped from foot to foot as she rummaged in the cabinet above the sink and finally found the medication she was looking for. It advised that one measure was enough in the little, clear plastic cup attached to the top of the lid, so she decided that two would probably be nearer the mark if she wanted to be out for the count in the next half an hour.
It tasted sweet, laced with a menthol flavour to mask the medicinal taste underneath, and it was as she was screwing the lid back on that she first got the strangest sensation that she wasn’t alone in the bathroom.
She spun around, expecting to see May standing sleepily behind her, wiping dreams from her eyes and crossing her legs. Andrea hadn’t switched the bathroom light on; it was to the front of the house and the moonlight was as strong in here as it was in her bedroom. Also, the sound of the extractor fan was loud and clunky, and she hadn’t wanted to wake her niece.
There was no one there, but still the feeling that she wasn’t alone wouldn’t go away. She slipped the bottle of sleep-aid back into the cabinet and trod softly into the hall. Away from the bottle of medication, away from the menthol scent that still hung in the air like a lingering gas, she could now smell something that didn’t belong. But as soon as she focussed on it, it was gone, as though the smell had never been there at all. She sniffed at the air, turning in all directions, the fragment of a memory evoked by the disappearing scent going the same way as the smell. Gone before it could be recognised.
There was nothing now but the faint whiff of stale pepperoni pizza, and the dry, chemically fibrous smell from the new carpet on the stairs.
Without any just reason, or any reason at all, for that matter, she descended the stairs slowly and quietly, peering through the gap in the sitting room door. Everything seemed as she had left it, and noticing that she had left a glass on the mantelpiece, from when David had fetched a glass of water for May, she decided to put it away. In her disturbed state, she was apt to lie awake for hours thinking about it, unable to sleep until she had put it away on the draining board in the kitchen.
She pushed the door to the sitting room open wide and stepped inside, pausing just beyond the doorway. The apprehensive feeling that she wasn’t alone crept over her once again, like a clammy hand overwhelming her. She wasn’t used to that sensation, and she was fearful suddenly of a burglar. It was just the time of year when they would be more liable to strike areas that were relatively safe, hoping for a few free Christmas presents. If there was an intruder here, she was fearful of walking too far into the room and leaving enough space between her and the door for a trespasser to slip through, surprising her from behind.
Pausing where she was, monitoring her breathing so it was calm and steady, and quiet, she studied the room before her. Even though extrasensory perceptions were alien emotions to her, she was beset by the overpowering notion that this didn’t feel like an ordinary burglar-caught-with-his-hand-in-the-cookie-jar situation. The atmosphere didn’t feel right. It wasn’t fraught with danger but charged with the malcontent presence of something that didn’t belong. Whatever it was, it didn’t feel human, and that scared her even more than the possibility of coming face to face with an opportunistic thug in a balaclava.
She took another tentative step into the gloom of the lounge, and was about to reach up behind her and turn the dimmer switch on, banishing the darkness and the fear and the question of what was here with her once and for all. But as her fingers found the cool brass of the switch, her eyes picked out a shape moving just beyond the lighter area highlighted by the moonlight from the window. She drew in a deep, shocked gasp of breath, and her fingers automatically turned the switch and the room quickly but gradually brightened. She was now fully visible, standing trembling and prone in her flimsy robe, but so was the intruder on the other side of the room.
She didn’t know what it was, and even as her heartbeat raced and gooseflesh crawled up her arms and the back of her neck, invited in by the very presence of the unknown entity in front of her, she still denied what she was seeing. The silvery, diaphanous figure seemed to float in mid-air, hovering in one spot over the sofa. It was tall, at over six feet, and although she could see no physical attributes other than the recognisable outline of a man, she felt like she should recognise it even by its shape.
Then it simply vanished as if a breeze had blown through it and separated its cells like wisps of smoke. The feeling that she was sharing the same space with something that was not human evaporated instantly, and the gooseflesh on her body seemed to notice it too for it sank back into her flesh, leaving her skin cold and tight to the touch.
Andrea rushed back up the stairs, forgetting all about the glass on the mantel, which she wouldn’t even remember until the next morning. She climbed into bed with the speed of a small child terrified of the monster that lurked underneath and would snatch at her feet, and lay there, eyes wide, fearful of closing them. She didn’t know when sleep came, was only sure that it had taken a long time, even with the effect of the sleep-aid. She lay there for a long time, staring at the door, willing whatever lurked beyond there to leave her alone, bathing in the moonlight which made her look hollow and ghostlike.
Sometime later in the night she cried out in her sleep, a haunting sound of dread no one heard.
From Part III: Voice Of The Dead/Chapter 1
The playgrounds of our youth are never what our memories perceive them to be. If they were, Andrea Simpson might have recognised the track in her bizarre dream from childhood. It ran away to the west of Porteden and led, eventually, to a small body of water called Witchy Way, which had been the favourite playground of all of Porteden’s children since time out of mind. Andrea and Jeanette had spent many summer days walking that length of track – a disused farm road that was popular amongst dog walkers too – and the red painted barn, with its lopsided door, had been there even when her mother had been a girl.
It wasn’t summer now, though. In the here and now, winter had well and truly settled in, and beyond the track of May’s visions and Andrea’s dream, Witchy Way pool was a frozen sheet of uninviting hardness. The sun dipped westwards, hanging low and cold in the clear blue sky, and the only people out on the track that had once been a tractor road to a farm weren’t two sisters, but two boys; brothers in mischief.
Chris Muir was annoyed. He was more than annoyed; he was seriously pissed off. That was a new emotional state to be in; Craig Robertson had taught him that one, though he would never dare say it in front of his parents. His mother would turn purple.
It was a perfectly sunny Christmas day afternoon, but it was cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey. Craig Robertson had taught him that one, too; though what a brass monkey’s balls had to do with being cold was anybodies guess.
He didn’t want to be outside. He had three new Playstation games to play, and there was a good movie on after the Queen’s speech (which his parents watched religiously) and the last place he wanted to be was a freezing lane in the middle of nowhere, numbing his backside off babysitting his baby brother. And ‘baby bro’ was really starting to gross him out. Thick, clear goo kept running from his nose and he only occasionally sniffed it back in. More often than not he wiped it on the sleeve of his blue parka, leaving a slug like trail of hardening snot up his arm. He was a disgusting little bugger.
Still, at least it got him out of the way of Granny and her amazingly loud and smelly colostomy bag. Chris was only dimly aware of what the bag actually did, and he didn’t like brooding on it for too long. That grossed him out, too.
Lewis was trailing about ten yards behind him, tugging on the nylon string attached to his brand new, bright red sledge. The sledge left deep grooves in the snow, and Chris knew there was at least another few hundred yards up the track to go before Lewis would be happy with the slope of descent. He hoped one push would be enough to send him screaming down the track, knuckles hard and taut against the front handlebar. If the little bugger – another of Craig Robertson’s words – wasn’t happy with that, he could amuse himself for the hour mother had told them to be out of the house while she finished off preparing dinner. He wasn’t sticking around to play big brother all afternoon. He was bored rigid.
“Hurry your backside up,” he yelled behind him. He could hear Lewis puffing and panting, trying to keep up on legs like stubby little logs.
“You’re walking too fast,” he called back. “I’m getting pooped.”
“You mean you pooped your pants,” Chris yelled, following it up with a hearty snort and a snigger.
“I did not. I’ll tell mum on you.”
Jesus Christ on a moped, Chris muttered to himself. “Will you just get a move on?”
Lewis shuffled onwards, his red Wellington boots crunch crunching in the snow. His cheeks were red and bright, and his nose was leaking again. He wiped at it without much vigour only when it began to drip onto his top lip, which he licked to make sure he had got it all. The fur trim of his hood hung back on his head because it tickled his cheeks too much, even though his ears were starting to sting and tingle.
Being six years old wasn’t a bad age to be. He was practically a big boy, or so his mother always said, and Uncle Gordon when he came to visit. Creepy Uncle Gordon with the furtive hands and the hard lump in his pants whenever he bounced a giggling Lewis on his knee.
But he couldn’t wait to be as old as Chris, which was another two years. Only so he could tell his older brother just what a jobbybag he was. He was always being mean, and when he knew no one was watching he sometimes slipped his hand into the back of Lewis’s trousers and yanked his pants up, his chubby little legs dangling almost an inch off the ground for the pinnacle of his humiliation. It didn’t hurt, but it was very uncomfortable. And it helped him to understand the more mature concept of embarrassment.
Chris was marching ahead. The steep incline of the track made it hard going, and his backside swished from side to side as he took greater strides to reach the top. Lewis was indeed, pooped. But he was glad he was passing the big red barn up the field to his right. The way one of its doors hung askew made the face of the building look like the gnarled, weather-beaten face of an old man winking at him.
He shivered and dragged his new sledge ever upwards. Chris was nearly at the top of the rise, hood pushed up on his head. When he turned around all Lewis saw was a black hole where his face should be, framed by the fur trim.
Lewis was suddenly scared. Chris was too far away. What if he slipped and fell, maybe banged his head on his new sledge and knocked himself un…un…unconbus? Chris would never reach him in time. He might die right there in the snow with the sound of his big brother’s boots crunching too slowly towards him.
Lewis picked up the pace, but it was difficult. The snow came halfway up his shins and his legs pressed it onwards, driving narrow ravines through the white drifts. Where the top of the track disappeared into the downward slope on the other side, two naked trees hung down and made an arch of their skeletal branches. Chris was disappearing beneath them, over the rise, vanishing from sight.
When Chris disappeared without another backwards glance, Lewis panicked and dragged himself through the snow, totally pooped, as he liked to say often, the lead weight of the new sledge dragged heavily behind him. The sledge was built for speed when weighed down with a small body, zipping downhill easily. But it was awkward and stubborn when being pulled uphill.
The sky seemed suddenly very low, the countryside around him quiet. A bird soared and made an annoying Ack-Ack-Acking sound above his head. It sounded like the little wondrous mechanism which fired red sparks inside his play machine gun, the one that his mother never let him play with ‘cause it brings on one of my heads, hunny’.
He rushed up the slope, excitement and fear now one total eclipse of a sensation. And it was only as he fell forwards clumsily in the snow, feet getting in the way of one another, mouth spitting out great gobs of melting white, that he realised the sledge had been yanked from his hand and the release of the tension had sent him stumbling.
He spun around, the hood of his parka slipping over his head and half covering his face, throwing him into a darkness where the sound of his exhausted breathing amplified loudly in his ears. He pushed the hood away from his eyes. It dragged a trail of nose-slime with it, marking his cheek. He didn’t know whether to laugh or screech when a dog jumped up on him and landed it’s big furry paws on his shoulders, sending him sprawling onto his backside...
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