Haunted Shadows 1: Sickness Behind Young Eyes (12 page)

22

Back in my room I half-heartedly
opened my case and began stuffing my clothes into my bag. The black of night
pressed on the windows so hard that I thought it might crack the glass. I wore
four layers, including a thick woolly jumper, and topped it off with a dressing
gown that came with the room, but still the chill worked its fingers up my
sleeves, down my neck, across my skin.

I walked over to the desk and picked
up my study books. The titles flashed at me as I put them in my case. Studies
of the Occult. The Fantastic and the Other. What a grand waste of time it had
been. The pages of these books had sucked away so many hours of my life that
even though I wanted to just leave them behind, I couldn’t. It was like a part
of me was trapped in them, and if I didn’t take them with me it would be stuck
in this chilly room where floorboards moaned and the wind shook the window
frame.

I thought about Jeremiah in the room
next to me. He had seemed so deflated about it all. I told him what I could,
but I didn’t dare explain the whole truth out. It wasn’t about getting one over
him anymore; I wanted to protect him. Maybe he had to make that decision for
himself though. Perhaps I should just tell him everything, about the hair in
the plug, the presence watching me as I looked into the bathroom mirror.

He would never believe me.

That was the face of it. Despite how
much he wanted to believe, he reigned himself in. He was so eager to prove
himself to the academics who spurned him that he wouldn’t accept truth unless
it was impeachable. He wasn’t all that different to Professor Higson, in that
regard. They sat on the same branch, but they stared at each other from
opposite ends.

The moon peeked through wispy clouds,
its pale light dying as it met the black sky. The lamp on the desk flickered. I
looked to the bedroom door. I ran my eyes along the wall, stopped where I had
seen the eye staring through a hole. A shiver tapped up my spine. It was just
wall now, but what about later? Would I wake up in the night and see that
bloodshot eye bulging through a crevice?

I couldn’t shake the feeling that
tonight I would hear the sounds that sent a stab of fear into my chest. Three
terrible knocks on the wooden door from tiny knuckles that shouldn’t be able to
make a sound. Would she rap incessantly on my bedroom door until I couldn’t
take it anymore?

Suddenly the darkness seemed to creep
in through the windows and cover me. I looked outside the pub, saw Jeremiah’s
car parked up. I wished I had the keys. We had one last night here, but it
seemed to stretch out like an endless road, and I wondered if I would ever get
to the end.

The light bulb fizzled and the yellow
glow dropped, replaced by a shroud of black. The room plunged into darkness,
and straight away I felt the skin on the back of my neck tingle. Shadows formed
in the corners of the room, grew and took shape as my mind tried to make sense
of them. A chill floated along the ground, blew on my ankles and up my legs,
raising tiny goosebumps as it snaked its way up my body.

Adrenaline stabbed through my chest.
The fuse box had blown. My mind clawed at memories that I had tried hard to
forget. Of being in my room at the bad foster home, lying in bed and seeing
black masses grow in the darkness near my bed. Getting up and flicking the
switch, the light staying dead because my parents never replaced the bulb. A
feeling of helplessness as I heard groans in the walls, felt unseen hands
reaching for me, faces staring at me.

I opened the bedroom door and walked
into the hallway of the pub. It took all my self-control not to break into a
run, and the effort drained me and threatened to paralyse my legs. I looked to
the end of the hall, and I felt my chest constrict and my heart leap into my
throat.

At the end of the hallway, in the
darkness, someone sat in a chair. They faced me and watched silently as I
padded along the floor in bare feet and stumbled into the wall. My face washed
with cold as though my blood had drained from it, and I clutched the bottom of
my dressing grown and gripped it tight as though it were a life ring in a
raging sea.

Another look, and I saw a chair with
a heavy coat draped over it, the sleeves slumped over the back.
Get a grip
of yourself.

I took careful steps over to Marsha’s
door. I listened. I couldn’t hear her stir, nor could I hear the groans or
snores of sleep. It was gone midnight and the pub was shut, so she must have
been in her room, but silence lay beyond her door. I knew she would get mad at
me but I didn’t care. I tapped softly on her door.

No answer. The hallway became darker
still, as though someone were pouring black paint over the walls and ceiling. I
knocked harder on the door.

“Marsha?” My voice left my throat as
a croak.

Another knock, loud enough to wake
anyone inside. Still, no answer.

She said the fuse box is in the
cellar.
I looked
further down the corridor. Jeremiah’s room lay at the end, but I knew I
couldn’t go to him. If he saw me jumping at every twist of the shadows, he
would call me crazy.

I swallowed, and my throat felt dry.
I clenched my fist and pressed my fingers into my palm, tried to settle my
raging pulse.
This is up to me.

I went into my room and took the
torch off the desk. I walked into the hallway, clicked the button and a curve
of light spat onto the walls. As I tiptoed down the creaking stairs my brain
shrieked at me. It told me to get in bed and wait until morning, that going
into the cellar was a stupid idea. But I couldn’t turn back. I couldn’t spend a
night in darkness. I thought my fear of it was long gone, left behind in my
childhood years where bedside lamps warned away the monsters of the night. It
turned out that fear never left you; it always stalked you, hovering behind close
enough to watch you without being seen.

The cellar felt like a refrigerator.
Stone walls lined the sides. They were colder than the ones in my room, as
though they had been built centuries ago and had held a sheet of ice on them
ever since. Bulbous wooden beer barrels sat empty along one side, and a rack
full of wine bottles glinted when the beam of my torch hit them. I span my
torch around the room and let the light bathe over every inch, but it seemed
that as soon as the light left one area the shadows crept back.

Something is here.

I couldn’t see anything, but I knew
it was true. I had the sense of certainty in me. It was a feeling of being
watched, where your skin prickles and a heavy weight settles over you, and when
you turn around you meet eyes staring back at you.

I span around and shot bolts of light
over the dusty floor and cold walls. The fuse box was set at knee height
against the wall furthest away from the door. At first I couldn’t force myself
to cross the cellar, as though there was a thick web that would trap me if I
moved. I took a few steps, felt the stony floor sting my feet. As I walked
across the darkness swallowed me up and I got the sense I was lost in a
never-ending wilderness.
How could Marsha live here and face this place every
night?

I bent down toward the fuse box and
flicked open the lid, but the plastic fell shut. I would need two hands, one to
prop the lid open, and the other to flip the switches. I set the torch beside
me on the floor, but as I placed it down I felt like a mountain climber
willingly cutting her own support line. I angled it so that the beam of light
pointed at the fuse box, and the yellow glow hit weak cobwebs and illuminated
the switches.

“Let’s see which fuse blew,” I said,
feeling my words scatter over the silence of the room.

The pub lounge switches were fine, as
were the toilets, Marsha’s room and Jeremiah’s room. As I traced my fingers
across them I stopped at the one that had tripped, the only one that pointed
down. It was the fuse for my room.

As I gripped the switch and went to
flick it, I felt my back freeze and the hairs on my arms stiffen. My nerves
endings screamed out, warned me that something stood behind me. I stopped
mid-breath and became as still as a statue. I didn’t dare move, like a camper
playing dead as a bear prowls nearby.

I knew something was there. Stood
silently in the shadows. Watching. Creeping. I didn’t dare breathe out, and I
held the air in my lungs until I couldn’t take it anymore. I wished I was
upstairs in bed or in the lounge. Anywhere with light. Just a place where
things didn’t move around me in the darkness.

I gasped as I felt something walk
closer to me. It stood behind me, so close that I could almost feel it brush
against my clothes. My skin tingled with a terrible chill.

Oh my god,
I thought, even the voice in my head
a whimper.

A hand took hold of my hair and
wrapped the locks around its fingers, then glided through the strands. Their
touch was gentle, like a fine comb running through from end to end. I felt the
skin on my back itch, and I held in a shudder as the fingers moved through my
hair.

My insides turned to water. My legs
were locked in place and wouldn’t move, and it was all I could do not to let a
whimper escape my throat. The cellar door seemed miles behind me, leaving me
trapped in the darkness with this thing caressing my hair. A scream rang in my
head but that was where it stayed. It was like my body was frozen in fright,
and that whatever happened I must not move or make a sound.

The hand gripped hold of my hair once
again. This time it tightened, and suddenly it yanked at me. It was so hard
that I felt hairs start to tear from their roots. My head jerked back sharply,
and I almost fell onto the stone floor. My heart smashed against my chest. I
couldn’t hold back the scream now. It pierced through the darkness, echoed off
the stone walls and seemed to break the spell on my legs.

I picked up the torch and scrambled
to my feet. I span the light into the darkness behind me, but there was nothing.
A cold shiver wrapped around my arms like a blanket, and a wave of despair
settled over me. My breath rushed out in panicked gushes, rising in the air
like steam.

I ran out of the cellar and left the
fuse tripped. The lounge and stairs blurred passed me until finally I found
myself in the upstairs hallway. I didn’t dare risk a look behind me as I went,
fearing that I might actually see her stalking me through the empty halls of
the pub.

I stopped outside Jeremiah’s room.
Inhibitions gone, I pounded on his door until my knuckles stung. The door stood
firm, the silence held.

“Jeremiah!” I shouted, my scratchy
voice stabbing at the quiet of the halls.

I pounded again, felt my hand sting.
Still the door didn’t move.

I turned and walked back to Marsha’s room.
I knocked on it again, this time not giving a damn whether I annoyed her or
not. I knocked and knocked, and the only answer I got was silence.

I twisted her handle and felt it move
all the way. I slowly opened her bedroom door and stepped inside. The glow of
the moon poured through the window, and I saw that the landlady’s room was
empty, her bed made as though she had never slept in it.

Next to the bed, on a dresser with a
mirror in the middle, was a book. I knew what it was straight away. As I walked
over to the dresser my pulse fired. Up close, the light of the torch confirmed
my suspicions and made my heart thud. It was the diary.

Marsha must have taken it from my
room, but why had she done it? Where was she now? And where the hell was
Jeremiah?

Footsteps creaked on the threshold of
the door. I span rang and shot a beam of light at the doorway. A figure stood
there, bathed in shadow. An old and twisted face watched me.

23

The figure stepped over the threshold
of the door. I shrank back and bumped into the dresser, knocking a bottle of
nail varnish to the floor. The figure moved closer, and as the moonlight hit
them the features untwisted. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw that it was
Marsha.

“You’re a snooper,” she said. She
looked around the room, inspecting it as if I was a thief and she needed to
make sure everything was in its place.

I held the diary in the air. “I could
say the same about you. What the hell are you playing at?”

Marsha strode across the room, the
floorboards thudding under her feet. She stood in front of me, reached out and
grabbed the diary. She held it tight in her hand and looked at it, as if
figuring out what to do.

I pictured her creeping around my
room while I was gone, sifting through my case and poking through my drawers.
The
nerve of the woman.
I felt my fingers curl into a fist, and the vein on my
temple pounded.

“Are you going to explain what the
hell is going on?”

“Where did you get this?” said
Marsha, shaking the diary in the air.

“Have you read it?” I asked.

Marsha looked at the ground and
stared as if she expected it to open up and devour her. When she looked up at
me, a moist film glinted as the moonlight hit the corner of her eyes.

“Aye, I’ve read it. Knew that I
shouldn’t, for what it’s worth. Couldn’t stop myself.”

I thought Marsha was just being nosy,
so I didn’t understand this reaction. What was she so upset about? What did
Emily have to do with her?

“Did you know her?” I said.

Marsha gulped. “Everybody in the
village knew her. Though you’d not get any of them to admit it now.”

“And why were you warning me away?”

Marsha took a step to the side and
sank herself into the bed. She sat straight and stared at me, eyes narrowed on
mine.

“You better sit down.”

The adrenaline seeped out of me,
taking every last scrap of my body heat with it. Despite the layers I wore my
shoulders still shivered. I sat down, wrapped my arms around my torso and
hugged myself, tried to shock warmth into my worn-out body.

Marsha stood up, lifted a dressing
gown off a hook and threw it on my lap.

“Put this on.”

I wrapped the dressing gown over my
back.

“This is my fiftieth layer.”

“It’s been a lot colder around here.
Ever since he died.”

It felt like a shadow had slipped
into the room. As though some invisible mass had drifted through the keyhole,
under the door and began to whirl around us, watching and listening from the
corners of the room. I leaned forward and whispered.

“What do you know about her?” I said.

Wait. Did she say ‘he’?

Marsha’s face sagged and her skin was
as pale as the weak light of the moon. Her eyes were glass balls, no life in
them anymore. She ran her hand through her hair, straining at the knots that
wouldn’t let her fingers pass.

I got the sense that something was
building inside her. Like there were words forming that she had long-fought to
keep buried, but she had been desperate to say. The vacant look on her face and
sloping of her shoulders showed me what a sad woman she really was. Suddenly I
felt a pang of regret for how I had treated her.

“This wasn’t always such a dark
place,” said Marsha, her words breaking the silence like a hammer smashing
glass.

“No?”

She shook her head. “Your room didn’t
used to be for rent. There was a time when it would be full of toy cars, Bob
the Builder posters. Goosebumps books. It used to be my favourite room in the
whole pub.”

I crossed my legs, kept my mouth
shut. It didn’t seem right to say anything.

“Thomas was such a good lad. Smarter
than me and his dad. There’s no way he would have been around here when he was
grown. No, he’d be working in some office in the city earning loads of cash.”

“You have a son?”

As she spoke she stared at me, but
her head didn’t move.

“I used to. Had a husband once, too,
until he loaded up the car with his clothes and the takings from the till.
Folks said they saw him in Falkirk one summer but I never bothered to look. The
pig can piss off.”

A crow landed on the windowsill
outside. It twisted its head and preened its oily feathers, and then it turned
and looked at us. I wondered if it had been the same one that had watched
Jeremiah the other night.

Marsha rubbed her hands up and down
her trousers in agitation. The skin around her eyes was red and her eyeballs
were glazed.

“I’m sorry lass,” she said. “This is
hard to talk about.”

“Then you don’t have to,” I said.

She gulped again. “I do. If you’re
going to poke around in secrets of the village then you better know what you
might find.”

“And what’s that?”

“Everything about Emily is black.”

The name spread out as a chill as it
left Marsha’s lips and drifted over the room. I lifted my legs onto the seat
and tucked them close against my chest. My heart pounded as I thought of what
to say. I knew what I wanted to tell her, but I didn’t know if she’d believe
me.

“I’ve seen things, Marsha. Here in
this pub. You’ll probably think I’m talking shit. But I’ve had a weird feeling
about my room since day one.”

Marsha nodded. “Aye. That’ll be
Thomas.”

I jerked my head up in surprise.

“What?”

Marsha’s stare met mine, eyes
intense. “I’m going to tell you something now, but afterwards you don’t
question me on it. Just believe what I say, and take it as the warning it is.”

“Okay,” I said, but suddenly I wasn’t
sure I wanted to hear it.

Marsha began to speak. The words
pushed weakly through her lips.

“Thomas came home from school one day
with a big smile on his face. You’d have thought it was his birthday. I asked
him why he was grinning like a clown and he told me ‘teacher let me sit next to
Emily’. Boy was always trying to make friends. I wished to god he’d never met
this one.

“The weeks go by and he won’t shut up
about Emily. It was always ‘Emily this’, ‘Emily that’. We had her round for tea
one night and I tell you,  there was something cold about her. The words she
used sometimes, ones a kid shouldn’t know. The look in her eyes when she
thought you couldn’t see, sort of like a mocking grin, like she was getting one
over on you. I told Dennis, the bastard in Falkirk, ‘She’s not coming round
here again. She makes me shiver.’ He told me I was being a daft bint.”

Marsha looked at her feet. Red rings
sat heavy under her eyes, a contrast to the chalky pale of her cheeks. A
trickle ran from the corner of her eyes and cut a channel across her face. She
sniffed, then rubbed her palm across the tear and smeared it away. Her voice
grew softer, as if the words wouldn’t come.

“One night, he went out to play with
her. Nothing special, something he did all the time. Den and me thought nothing
of it. Then the hours passed and I sat in the lounge and waited for the doors
to open and for my smiling boy to run in covered in mud. But Thomas’s room
stayed empty from that night on.

“Every parent thinks their child will
live forever. They never imagine that they will see their son’s coffin before
they lie in their own.”

Her breath left her mouth in a steamy
trail. Water welled up in her eyes like a sink filled to the brim. She lifted
her hands into her face and sobbed silently into her fingers.

When she pulled her hand away her
face was red, but her features looked strong again. The stern look had gone
from her face, and I didn’t think I would ever see it there again. All I saw
was a sad woman who had lost everything.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t talk
about this anymore.”

I wanted to know what happened to
Thomas and Emily, but she looked one finger poke away from shattering. I
couldn’t push her on this. There was a deep sadness in her, thick like oil and
sitting heavy in her chest.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I understand.”

“No you don’t.”

I nodded. “Okay, I don’t. But I don’t
expect you to say anything.”

The moonlight hit half of Marsha’s
face and left the rest covered in shadow.

“You better go see your friend,” she
said.

“I don’t have a clue where he is.”

“Last time I saw him, he was walking
toward the woods. Here, take the diary. You might as well have it.”