Dark Companions (9 page)

She had to keep dabbing her eyes while she prepared dinner. The gas sounded jerky—but that was only her hearing, trying to return to her. After dinner, when she drew the curtains, she could hardly see out of the bedroom window or hear the murmur of the town. Was the child playing tricks again? Certainly a light was flickering. She groped her way to the bathroom to mop her eyes.

All evening Paul told jokes, some of which she hadn’t heard before. “Have another drink,” he kept insisting, as though that would make her a more appreciative audience. Oh, what was worrying him? Could it be the very nature of his job? No, he’d come to terms with that long ago. Though she had never seen him so much as threaten violence, he felt no such reticence over national defence.

She followed him upstairs. He was swaying a little beneath the burden of alcohol; she hoped it would drag him down into sleep. When he went into the bathroom she could still feel his tension, entangled with her nerves. She’d neglected to draw the bedroom curtains when her eyes had been smarting. She strode to the window and halted, coughing with shock.

Perhaps the streetlamp had failed, robbing her of the silhouetted tree. For a moment, alcohol hindered her thoughts sufficiently for her to think so. But how could that explain the dark vague bulk, so close that it must be in her garden? What was this silence that clung to her as though she were in the grip of a trance?

As she stared, unable to look away, a pale patch grew clearer within the bulk. It was a window, at about the same level as hers. Within it dim light moved slowly as the glow of embers. By its size, the window must belong to a back bedroom. She was gazing at the back of a house, where no house could be.

She forced herself to turn away, to recapture some sense of her bedroom, her house, light, familiarity. A figure was lying in the bed. She hadn’t heard him enter. “Oh God,” she cried inadvertently, starting.

He jerked nervously. “What? What’s wrong?”

“That is. That! Can’t you see?”

Now she was frightened in a new way, for she realised he could not. “What?” he demanded, staring straight at the dim unsteady rectangle. “What are you talking about?”

The threat of a night’s insomnia edged his voice. Was she going to add to his worries? She swallowed; her fear sank into her guts. “Nothing. It’s gone now,” she lied.

“Come to bed then, for heaven’s sake.”

She closed her eyes before dragging the curtains shut. “I think I’ll just have a nightcap first.”

In fact she downed two more drinks before she felt able to peer out of the living-room. The tree stood beyond the hedge; the branches sprinkled with buds and the privet leaves were lurid with sodium light. The longer she stared, trying to fix the view in her mind, the less familiar and more unreal it seemed.

Paul lay on his back, his lips trembling with snores. She slipped in beside him. At last, when she’d stared at the sodium glow through the curtains for minutes, she took off her glasses. Her stomach felt calmer. Alcohol was melting the icy lump of fear.

She lay teeming with thoughts. Had Paul’s tension infected her? Was it making her imagine things? She preferred the alternative: that she’d seen a house that was no longer there. Why should she feel menaced? Good Lord, what could a house that no longer existed do? Her eyes grew heavy, but still she reopened them, to check that the light wasn’t flickering. Around her, unsharpened by her glasses, the room was very vague.

She stared at the place where the bricks were hidden. Rocks gleamed, polished by the sea. It seemed impossible that there was no trace of what she’d seen—but she was stubbornly convinced that she’d seen it: there could be nothing wrong with her mind. Perhaps more rocks would help bury what was there, if there was anything. Besides, a walk to the beach would take her away from the house. Her gladness dismayed her.

Today the sea was calm. The sun made a shoal of glittering fish that swam in all the rock pools. Over the beach crept the incessant mouthless whispering of waves. She selected rocks, and wished she felt closer to the stillness.

She set down the rocks. The growth of the cairn was satisfying, but would it be enough? Would the pile act as a gravestone, or something of the kind? Though she knew she had dug it herself, the earth looked as it would have if it had been upheaved from beneath.

She was being stupid. All right, she had seen the house that used to stand here. Was that so terrible? The length of the garden separated the previous house from hers. Surely that was reassuring. After all, houses couldn’t move.

If only she could tell Paul! Well, in time she would be able to. At least that hope was heartening. Perhaps, she thought as he opened the gate, she could tell him soon, for he looked somehow relieved.

“I’ve got to go away,” he said at once.

She felt her hope being squeezed to death in her stomach. “When?” Her voice sounded dwindled, as she felt.

“Tomorrow.” He was staring at her. “Oh, come on, Elaine,” he said, all at once nervously irritable. “I’ve got enough problems.”

“I’m sorry.” She let her anxiety sound.

“I’ll be back tomorrow night.”

Presumably he’d meant to stay away overnight, but now was trying to reassure her. “Take care,” she said, suddenly anxious in another way.

After dinner he helped clear up and dried the dishes. She washed slowly, too meticulously. When they’d finished she said “Make me another drink.” She was afraid to go upstairs.

The longer she dawdled, the more afraid she would be. Why, it wasn’t even dark; the lower reaches of the sky glowed rustily. Drawn curtains ought to make her feel safe in her house—not that there was anything to fear. When she forced herself to hurry upstairs her footsteps sounded like an eager child’s clambering. She strode into the bedroom and grabbed the curtains—but her hands clenched spasmodically.

The dark house loomed over her. She could see no streetlamp, nor the glowing sky. It was as though the house had choked all light with smoke. Only the dim window was lit. Although it was very grubby or veiled with smoke, she could see into its room.

The room looked cramped, though it was difficult to be sure; the unquiet glow brought the walls billowing sluggishly forward. Apart from a long prone shape, the room looked bare. What was the shape? It emerged lethargically from the dimness, as from mud. As she stared, unaware that her nails were piercing her palms through the curtains, the silence held her fast, like amber. The shape was only a bed. But was there a form lying beneath its grey blankets?

All at once she clashed the curtains together, restoring sounds to herself. She was ready to clatter downstairs in panic—but she made herself wait with her back to the window until she could walk down. The very fact that she could turn her back proved she was still in control.

Nevertheless she tried to stay downstairs as long as possible. She mixed drinks and proposed new games. But Paul refused to stay up late; he wanted to leave early next morning. “The sooner I go the sooner I’ll be back.”

She retreated into bed without going to the window. A dim vague light crept back and forth on the curtains, as though seeking entry. There was nothing to fear except the strangeness. The glimpses had developed slowly as a primitive photograph; the process was too sluggish for anything to happen before Paul returned home. Should she tell him then? She clung to him, but he was busy snoring.

When she woke Paul had gone. He mustn’t have wanted to disturb her. She lay hanging on to sleep, unwilling to open her eyes. Abruptly she struggled out of bed and fumbled back the curtains to gaze at the tree.

Later, while she was shopping, she met an old lady who lived nearby. Beneath the severe purple-rinsed coiffure the eyes blinked once; the pale lips doled out “Good day.” It was almost a reproof. But Elaine was determined not to miss her opportunity. “Could I ask you something?” she said, her friendly tone disguising her tension.

After a pause the other admitted “You may.”

“Where I live now—was there ever a fire?”

“In your house, do you mean?”

Beneath the deftness there seemed to be resentment, perhaps contempt. “No,” Elaine said, restraining her impatience. “Before my house was built.”

“I believe there was something of the kind.”

The old lady’s shopping trolley turned, ready to move on. “Who started the fire?” Elaine said, too eagerly. “How was it started?”

“Oh, I really couldn’t tell you. There was quite a family living there. One of the children was retarded. Now I must be about my tasks.” She was almost at the end of the aisle of tins when she called back “Of course it was during the war. I should think it would have been a bomb.”

Her words confused Elaine. They refused to fit together logically. Perhaps they couldn’t; perhaps that had been the woman’s intention. As Elaine unpacked the shopping they faded, leaving her mind open to more immediate and disturbing speculations.

She wished she could go out visiting—but she wouldn’t know when Paul had returned. She didn’t like to leave him alone in the house until she had told him what she had seen. Should she continue to build the rockery? Suppose the rockery was aggravating what was happening?

Eventually she walked down to the beach. Often the sea helped her grow calm. But today the sky was walled off by slate; the beach was trapped in its own brooding glow. At least the prospect slowed down her thoughts. When sunset began smouldering beneath the enormous grey wall, she made herself walk home.

Each street she traversed was darker. Sudden light threaded the lines of streetlamps. If the dark house was standing inside her gate, what would she do? Absurdly, she found herself wondering obsessively what it might look like from the front. But the garden was bare except for the lumpy heap of rocks above the churned earth. The sight was frailly reassuring.

She prepared dinner, then she made herself a snack. She’d eat dinner with Paul, if he wasn’t home too late. Surely he wouldn’t be. The sound of her chewing filled her ears and seemed to occupy the house, which was hollow with silence.

It was dark now. She should have drawn the curtains earlier—but then she wouldn’t know what was beyond them. Nothing was outside the living-room but the rockery, the tree, the lamp. She reached into the hall and into rooms, switching on all the lights. At last she ventured into the bedroom. Apprehension stirred deep in her. She averted her face as she stepped forward to the curtains. But the silence seized her, and she had to look.

The house was there, of course. She couldn’t pretend that it was easier to live with now that it had grown familiar; her fists crumpled the curtains. Within the smoky window, muffled light crawled somnolently. Something lay on the vague bed.

Very gradually—so gradually that she lost all sense of time—she began to distinguish its shape. It was a figure, supine and still, though the uneasy light made the blankets seem to squirm like a cocoon. It was wholly covered. Was it a corpse?

Her mind was struggling to regain control of her limbs, to drag her away. Her fascination held her; the figure seemed too shapeless for a corpse, it reminded her of— When she managed to think, fear clutched her stomach. The shape beneath the blankets was exactly like a dummy made of pillows, the sort of dummy children left to represent them while they sneaked away.

Momentarily her terror, not yet quite defined, weakened her fascination, and she became aware of a nagging sense that she ought to be hearing a sound. What sound? Her nervous frustration made her hands shake. All of a sudden they banged together, nearly wrenching the curtains from their rail.

It was the call of the telephone. She ran downstairs, almost falling headlong. Oh, please don’t let the caller ring off! Her footsteps resounded in the deserted living-room as she snatched the receiver from the hall table. “Yes?” she gasped. “Hello? Yes?”

“I’ve just stopped off to tell you I’m on my way,” Paul said. “Are you all right? You sound—I don’t know.”

“Yes, I’m all right.” She sounded unconvincing, but the truth would take too long. “You’ll be quick, won’t you? Please be quick.”

As she set down the buzzing receiver she noticed the crack between the living-room curtains. It ought to be orange with sodium light, but instead it was blocked by a dark bulk. High in the bulk, light flickered lethargically.

She was retreating, unable to think, towards the back door when her earlier terror came clear and froze her. If the thing in the bed was pretending to be someone, where was that someone now? Who was abroad in the night, and to what purpose?

Her panic sent her stumbling upstairs. She left the bedroom door open so as to hear any sound in the house. She sat trembling on the bed and stared at the tight curtains. Only the restless light troubled the darkness beyond them.

Where had Paul called from? Oh, please let him have been nearly home! He wouldn’t be long now—not long, please not long. She wished she had a drink to quiet her, but that would have meant going downstairs, closer to whatever was roaming the night.

If anything was. Mightn’t her imagination, made hectic by all the strangeness, have got the better of her? Surely the figure in the bed could be a corpse. In the circumstances that would be reassuring. However disturbing, a corpse was hardly a threat.

Minutes later she reached the window. Her reluctance made the carpet feel hindering as a marsh. At the curtains, her will seemed unequal to the struggle with her hands. But her hands sneaked past her fear, to the curtains, and opened a crack for her to peer through.

Silence closed around her. It drew her head forward and parted her hands to widen the gap between the curtains. Dim light wavered over the grey window, which appeared to hover in a block of night. With a painful slowness that released her breath in infrequent gasps, she made out what was beyond.

The blankets were rolled back from the bed; they slumped against the footboard. On the exposed mattress lay an old stained bolster. The whitish patches that protruded from it here and there must be lumps of stuffing. Over it the stifled light crawled.